Breaking the Lines
by kitsunerei88
Summary: [Fanfiction of murkybluematter's The Rigel Black Chronicles] Caelum's life is full of lines, between pureblood and Muggle, powerful and weak, pure and impure, fake and real, right and wrong. Harriett Potter shatters them all. A story about Caelum Lestrange, first and foremost: about his childhood, his life, and his relationship with a certain Harriett Potter.


**Breaking the Lines**

 _Summary:_ [Fanfiction of The Rigel Black Chronicles] Caelum's life is full of lines, between pureblood and Muggle, powerful and weak, pure and impure, fake and real, right and wrong. Harriett Potter shatters them all. A story about Caelum Lestrange, first and foremost: about his childhood, his life, and his relationship with a certain Harriett Potter.

* * *

 _Authoritas Intra Puritas._

As a child, Caelum sits on the floor in the Lestrange Manor's formal dining hall for hours, staring at the handsome crest and motto, carved, enormous, above the great fireplace. The fireplace is large enough for five men, standing abreast, to Floo in. When he is a child, the fireplace is always lit, always bright, and the hall is warm. He loves this room, then – it is the Lestrange centrepiece, the carved gray marble above the fireplace showing the Lestrange family crest: a proud tower on a quartered field, blood on snow and iron.

His great-aunt sits him at her knee, there, and tells him stories about their family, about their history, about their legends. Great-Aunt Leta tells him the Lestrange family's roots back to the Norman Conquest, about how his many-times-great grandfather stood at the shoulder of William the Conqueror himself when they crossed into England, tells him about how his many-times-great grandmother who worked with Slytherin in the eleventh century, tells him about a many-times-great-uncle Lestrange, the curse and counter-curse expert, and about the Lestranges who stood at the side wizarding kings and about the Lestranges who defied them. She tells him about the Scared Twenty-Eight families, about his family's noble inclusion onto that most exclusive listing of pureblood families.

Even as a child, Caelum knows. He knows that he is a pureblood – and more than that, he is a Lestrange. He knows that the House of Lestrange is wealthy, powerful, noble, pure. He knows that the Lestranges are sharp, cunning, and strong. It's right there, in their motto, _power within purity_. The Lestranges are a strong House, a powerful House, and they are so _because_ of their purity.

In between those tales, Great-Aunt Leta tells him, too, about Lestranges who aren't in any of their family histories. She tells him about Lestranges who loved Muggleborns, who left the Family to be with them; Lestranges who joined Light politics and sought equality for all; Lestranges who secretly protected their Muggle neighbours during times of sickness and turmoil. As a child, he knows that she shouldn't be telling him these things, but Great-Aunt Leta is always around, always there for a hug and a kiss and story, so Caelum keeps quiet about these. Great-Aunt Leta has always been a little odd, but at least she is there.

She passes away young, younger than a witch ought. The Lestranges do not go to her funeral.

* * *

Caelum thinks, later, that this is the beginning. He is five – old enough to remember her stories, old enough to remember her hushed, wistful tones when she told him those stories. He's old enough to remember her warmth, as cold as the Lestrange Manor becomes. No fires burn, then, in the formal dining hall.

His parents are never there. They are busy with their family's businesses, with politics. He loves them, he thinks, in a distant way – his father largely ignores him, and his mother … well, his mother is like no one else.

When things are going well for her, when things are falling out the way she wishes them to, then she is kind. She brings him presents, smiles at him, she pays him attention. She dismisses his tutors, these days, and they go to Diagon Alley, to Hogsmeade, to magical beast sanctuaries. Caelum loves these days – his tutors are so dull, so dry, so boring. They lecture on and on about pureblood bloodlines, about magical heritage, about pureblood values and ideals and about who is tainted and who is not. His mother is creative, inventive, _fun_.

But his mother is also volatile, and when she is displeased, she is dangerous – prone to hexing people, prone to violence. She becomes creative in her punishments, inventive in her hexing, and she finds cursing people fun.

So Caelum learns. He learns that he need not treat a Rookwood, though pure, with the same respect he ought to treat a Rosier, because Rosiers are one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. He learns that, although the Weasleys are part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, that is a mere technicality and that they should be disdained. He learns that the Selwyns are lower in Lord Riddle's favour than the Parkinsons, that the Boles were only in this generation able to call themselves pure, that where one needed allies, one should no longer look to the House of Black, as while they might still be pure, they had turned away from the proper ideals.

He learns and learns and learns, in great gulps and swallows, because his mum's stinging hexes hurt.

* * *

Caelum doesn't have friends. On rare occasions, his parents arrange play dates for him with other children. He remembers several with the Rosier boy, Aldon, and with him his friend Edmund Rookwood, with the Selwyns, the Yaxleys, the Boles. He doesn't like these very much. The other children don't like him – when other children are around, they obviously like the other children more than they like him. But he doesn't see them enough to make friends with them anyway.

Lestranges don't have friends, his mother tells him when he complains. It's the other children's fault for not understanding how important he is, how important it is to make the Lestranges happy, but it ultimately doesn't matter because Lestranges don't have friends. Lestranges have _allies,_ and allies aren't friends. If they were, what would happen if one did something that was against the Lestrange House's interests? It would be so much harder to betray a friend than an ally. He works hard to convince himself that his mother is right, so _allies_ is what the Rosiers, the Boles, the Selwyns become, and he plays nice, if only barely keeping the sneer off his perfectly balanced face, and goes home to spend time, alone, in his room with his books.

Great-Aunt Leta had friends, once, he remembers. She was friends with Newt Scamander, the renowned Magizoologist, for years. They had not spoken, seen each other in decades upon decades. But her voice when she spoke of him was always wistful, full of regret, full of _feeling._ He wonders, in the dark of his mind, in the dark of the night, what it would be like to have a friend.

He never lets these soft, wistful thoughts escape into the daylight.

* * *

His parents send him to Durmstrang. Hogwarts, they say, though pureblood-only, is tainted by those of lesser blood, like Professors Snape and McGonagall, and the school is run by the head of the Light and notorious Muggle-Lover, Albus Dumbledore. Durmstrang is different – Headmaster Karkaroff is a known ally to the SOW Party, and the school has never accepted a student of less than pure blood.

A quiet voice from the back of his mind points out that his parents, his forefathers have always attended Hogwarts, that his parents did so with halfbloods, that his grandparents did so with Mudbloods. He wonders why, now, when the school is pureblood only, it is necessary for the Lestrange Heir to attend school out of country. Caelum has questions, as he usually does, but he ignores them. He has long since learned to agree with his mother's decisions.

That first year is the hardest. Perhaps it is the first month, really, that is the hardest – Caelum realizes that, whatever else his parents might be, they are idiots. It may be true that Durmstrang, unlike Hogwarts, is untainted by Muggle ancestry. It may be true that his fellow students at Durmstrang have a much better grasp of pureblood etiquette, pureblood culture, pureblood wizarding history. It may even be that Durmstrang is a better school.

He doesn't know. He doesn't speak Russian.

It takes perhaps a week for one of his dormmates, a chubby boy by the name of Poliakoff, to take pity on him. Two months prior, Caelum Lestrange would have spurned his attention – he has never heard of a Poliakoff family, so surely they are not so high in standing that they would matter in any way. But a week of silence, a week of confusion, and he is certainly more … amenable to anyone willing to help.

It doesn't mean he needs to be nice, of course. The poor boy's English is not very good, but it is better than nothing.

"My name is Gregor Poliakoff," he introduces himself over breakfast, holding a hand out to shake. Reluctantly, slowly, Caelum takes it. "You are from England?"

"Yes," Caelum replies, a slight sneer marring his face. He would have liked to snarl at the boy for stating the obvious, but even if it wasn't anyone important, even if it was evident through a week of observation that Poliakoff was not especially well-liked by the other boys, Poliakoff was talking to him. He needed someone to talk to him, if only to tell him what the homework was, so that he could attempt to complete it.

He doesn't know how he'll do that, yet. The library is full of books in Russian. His essays are expected to be in Russian. Even the spell incantations are not in the Latin with which he is familiar. He thinks they might be Slavonic, but he isn't sure.

"Why are you not at Hogwarts?" the other boy asks curiously, cocking his head to one side ( _like a dog,_ Caelum thinks uncharitably). "It is a good school."

Caelum thinks about telling him what his mother has said: that Hogwarts is tainted with Muggles, that Durmstrang is the only appropriate school for a proper pureblood heir, that he is a Lestrange and entitled to better than Hogwarts. But his mind is swimming with the realities: the reality that his parents' pureblood allies have all sent their children to Hogwarts, that Hogwarts _is_ a pure-blood only school, that at least at Hogwarts he would _bloody understand the language_ , and feels a sharp surge of unnamed anger.

He says simply, "My parents thought it best I attend Durmstrang."

The other boy nods, slowly, and Caelum sees himself reflected in the other boy's eyes. He is a skinny boy, pitiable - eleven years old, far from home, smaller than the other boys in his year. His face is pretty, lacking the solid structure of the Eastern European purebloods, lacking strength. His hands are fidgeting, which he quells the minute he sees it, but worst of all, he thinks, are his eyes. His eyes, Lestrange-blue, are simply lost – lost and desperate.

Caelum hates it. He hates being pitied, and he knows that this is what it is, and worst of all, he knows that he _needs_ the pity because he needs someone to tell him what is happening in the classes that he follows his dormmates to, so he can do his homework, so he can pass his classes and avoid shame on the Lestrange name. More importantly, he needs the pity because he is weak, because he wants to avoid his mother's oft-repeated threat to try more creative punishments on him, because he knows that she would act on it and because he doesn't have the knowledge or the strength to defend himself. Perhaps, he thinks later, this is when he begins to hate.

"I will teach you a translation spell," Poliakoff says, finally. "Many students from Poland, Bulgaria, or the other countries use it at first, before they master Russian. But it is not perfect. You will understand the main points of things, but you will need to learn the language quickly not to lose points on your written work. It is better than nothing."

Caelum nods, silent. He hates needing the help, and after the spell is learnt, he doesn't speak to Poliakoff again.

* * *

Poliakoff is right, and the translation spell is not perfect. It is designed for languages more closely related than English and Russian, and he only gets the gist of most lectures and textbooks. Still, it gives him time to learn Russian, and even if his parents might be idiots, he is decidedly not, and he secludes himself in the library with his textbooks and a Russian grammar and _learns_. He still loses points on his homework, and quite a lot of them, because even after he understands the concepts, after long studying, he can't explain the depth of his knowledge because he can't bloody communicate properly.

He doesn't have friends, but a Lestrange doesn't need friends, and in any case, he doesn't have time for friends anyway.

They give him points for being able to execute the spells properly, but they can't give him points on the theory, so he comes out with middling below-average marks. By the time he goes home for Christmas, he knows he is in for it, because though he can now understand the lectures given by the professors without the spell, it is only imperfectly and he still cannot complete his essays without the stupid translation spell.

He prepares himself mentally for his mother's anger, but nothing prepares him for the Cruciatus curse. From that day onwards, there are no good days – he is forever branded, in her mind, as her idiot son, and as much as they keep up appearances in public, he knows that she hates him.

He hates her, too, and publicly manipulates her as ruthlessly as she uses him.

* * *

It is, oddly, Bellatrix that pushes him into potions.

He had never thought he would be a potioneer – it is not an area that either Bellatrix or Rodolphus are skilled in, and it is an area that they largely ignore. At first, it is just his strength at school, the one subject that he excels, because Caelum is, whatever Bellatrix thinks, not an idiot. The translation spells work best on potions recipes, where the language is restricted to straightforward instructions and he has the time, while his cauldron simmers, to puzzle out the Cyrillic and learn. It is potions, too, where theory marches closely with practice, where he can show his understanding, if not in an essay, in a successful result.

Later, after that disastrous first trip home, and as embarrassing as it is to admit, he becomes a potioneer because so much Healing is in potions. He is not a Healer and has no plans to become one, but being a potioneer means he doesn't need to suffer the humiliation of visiting a Healer when his mother is upset. Instead, he simply slips down to the ancient Lestrange potions lab and produces a healing draught in a few hours that can ease the after-tremors of the Cruciatus curse, a balm that speeds healing of any cuts and bruises, a potion that can calm his panic when he arrives home from Durmstrang with his latest marks. Sometimes, he makes potions that enhance his endurance, increase his stamina, in advance of these days, because they help him withstand her better.

In time, potions become _his_. He likes the silence in brewing, the loneliness. People don't bother him while brewing, and even though, having proved his penchant for creative, painful revenge, the other students at Durmstrang have long since stopped teasing him for his looks, his grades, his speech, he likes the quiet. He likes the precision required to know when to put in ingredients, he likes the mental exercise of keeping track of stirs and counter-stirs. He likes the intellectual challenge that potions pose; unlike spells, potions don't work simply because the caster _wants_ it badly enough. Potions require intelligence, care, _investment_. Potions are _his_ , and if that means he must put up with Bellatrix's complaints about the amount that his " _potions indulgence_ " costs, well, if she didn't complain about that, it would be something else, and he is more than equal to the task of putting her in uncomfortable public situations to pay for it.

He spends more and more, and increasingly more, time on potions, and by his fourth year, he is fast-tracked into the sixth-year program.

* * *

It is the summer between his sixth and seventh years that he meets _her_. Caelum is sixteen years old, then, and his life is a mess of contradictions. He is an English pureblood, but he is more comfortable casting spells in Slavonic. He is Bellatrix's idiot son, but he has won himself a spot in the English Potions Guild Internship Program. He is a coward, making so many of his decisions with the threat of Bellatrix's wand in mind, but he is a terror at school. He is popular, an Heir from a powerful family, but he has no friends. He is pureblood, with all the connotations that implies, and he benefits from all the privilege of being a pureblood, but he hates the political game, he hates all the soft-spoken passive-aggressiveness, he hates the lies. He hates Rodolphus, he hates Bellatrix, but he has inherited all the sharpness of his forebears, and he is unafraid to unleash it on all, equally, on anyone who might deserve it. He is a pureblood, he is the Lestrange Heir – but he doesn't _belong_. He'll never belong.

There is only one thing that he is certain of, and it is that, whether it be by hard work, by skill, or simply by desire, he is a _potioneer_.

At first sight of her, he is insulted. First, she is the perfect picture of a certain Rigel Black, who had so atrociously shamed him at the last New Year's Gala. He doesn't even like to think on the boy, as ill-mannered as he is, and he first mistakes her for Black.

Second, she is all of thirteen years old, and _she is in Potions Guild Internship Program with him_.

"What are you doing here?" he spits out. "This program is for talented brewers, not amateur children."

She quirks her head slightly to one side, her face politely confused. "Have we met?" she asks him softly.

He is offended, then – it is the highest of insults in wizarding society to forget a face, and even that is eclipsed by someone pretending to have forgotten. And to have the person pretending to have forgotten be Rigel Black, of the now degenerate House of Black, well, that was not to be borne.

"Very funny, _Black_ ," he retorts. "Too good to remember your betters?"

" _Ohhh,"_ the girl breathes then, her green eyes widening in understanding. _Green eyes?_ The Black bloodline carried stormy gray eyes, like those of Bellatrix, his aunt Narcissa – it was one of their pureblood genetic traits. "You've met my cousin then, Rigel Black? Don't worry, this sort of thing happens a lot. We are very similar in appearance."

Caelum is taken aback, and spends a moment reviewing the Black family tree. Black's cousins would be, in the first degree … no one. In the second degree, there is of course Draco Malfoy, whom he has met and who shares the usual Malfoy inherited traits, and apparently his disgrace of an aunt Andromeda had had a child with a Mudblood, but she is supposed to be close to his age, a bit older than this child. "Is that so?" he recovers. "How _convenient_. Who exactly are you supposed to be then? Regulus Black's bastard child—"

She cuts him off, then, a hint of steel in those green eyes. "Careful," she replies, her voice still placid. "Regulus Black doesn't take kindly to slights against the Black family name. I'm not related to Rigel by blood, however – I should have said, _honorary_ cousin. My name is Harry, Harry Potter."

Caelum is even more taken aback, then, and looks her over. He doesn't know much about the Potter family, which was pureblood until the current Head, James Potter, married a Mudblood. But he thinks that the traits are there – unruly black hair, glasses. It could be believed, he thinks, and he falls back on the easiest, and often most effective, insult for preteen girls.

"You've got to be the ugliest girl I've ever seen."

Her eyebrows snap together and she takes a calming breath. Sometimes, the classic insults are classic for a reason. She doesn't cry, but the reaction is enough – he'll get there. "Perhaps I am," she says evenly, not a hint of upset in her voice. "But I think it's awfully rude to say so."

Caelum lounges back in his seat, satisfied. Even if she is here, in _his_ space, she won't last. She is thirteen, a girl, and a halfblood besides. How could she up to his standard? They probably only let her in for the novelty. "Why cares what you think?" he says unconcernedly. "A brat like you won't last a week in this program. They'll send you home crying like the little girl that you are."

He sees, from the corner of his eye, her turn away from him in anger and introduce herself to the other student, and smirks when the other student tells her to go away.

* * *

It is to his shock as much as the other student, Renaldo Casillas ( _pureblood, but not a noble house_ ), that Harriett Potter is _good at potions._

A murmur in the back of his head pointed out that, obviously, if she had gotten into this program, she had to have some skill – even if the Guild were simply making a publicity stunt, having a thirteen-year-old witch as an intern, regardless of whatever it said about people like him and Casillas who _worked_ to get here, she couldn't have been terrible at potions. But he had ignored it.

That first day, Harriett Potter practically recites an ingredient encyclopaedia to Master Rutherage. He isn't worried, then – even Mudbloods can memorize. If anyone outside the Guild looked, it would appear as though the Potter girl had earned her place, instead of being a token minority, a nod to those who thought pureblood supremacy was wrong. Caelum doesn't know how anyone can believe that – there are clear differences between purebloods and those with Muggle blood. Purebloods are stronger, have better control, and better magical abilities generally. Only purebloods have magical gifts. Once they move beyond the basics, he thinks, once they move from the realm of listing out ingredients and their uses, surely the Potter girl will fail.

In spite of himself, he remembers his many-times great-aunt, Medea Lestrange, blasted off the family registry for marrying a halfblood. That halfblood, a certain Albert Hunt, Lord-level wizard, was later known for his extensive advancements in Transfiguration in the fourteenth century. And there was Aloysius Lestrange too, in the nineteenth century, once Heir to the House of Lestrange – disowned when he married a Mudblood, Alicia Bones, one of the developers of the wizarding legal system. The Bones, technically pure-blooded now, still held a chokehold in the Wizarding Courts. And of course, there was Great-Aunt Leta herself, childhood friends of the half-blood Newt Scamander.

The stories are troubling, so he ignores them.

On the second day, the topic is Poisons and Antidotes – and Harriett Potter is still answering questions flawlessly. He exchanges a couple glances with Casillas when the girl manages to answer questions about an obscure poison, surprised, but then again, poisons are not a very difficult branch of potions, not _really,_ since they generally use the same ingredients and follow the same theory. Antidotes, too, are alike – perhaps, he thinks, perhaps she is intelligent enough to learn about this topic. Poisons and Antidotes are only one, very limited, part of the potions field, and she does well for a halfblood.

It is on the third day that he begins to _realize_.

He doesn't know how, or why, but Harriett Potter _knows_ Transformative Potions – she talks like she has _brewed_ them, like she has brewed Polyjuice and Wolfsbane, and when would a thirteen-year-old halfblood witch at a second-rate American school learn _that_? Her answers are not just complete – they are thoughtful, deep, rigorous, and Caelum can tell that Master Rutherage is impressed. Potter stumbles some on the fourth day, Love Potions, which Caelum snickers throughout because really, for her, why would she be weak on _Love Potions_? But really, truly, it is the fifth day of instruction that stuns him.

She is late, that day. Master Rutherage only frowns when the clock strikes nine, and locks the laboratory door as usual before beginning his lecture. He is hopeful, then – perhaps Potter has dropped out? Perhaps she has realized, finally, that she did not belong in these circles? It wouldn't make any sense, not with how demonstrably well she had been doing over the past few days, but he dismisses it immediately. One never knew.

Yet not five minutes later, Potter bursts into the lab, gasping, windswept, sweating.

"It—ah—it wasn't locked," she pants, her eyes darting over the laboratory.

"Wasn't it?" Master Rutherage replies, then tilts his head at her workstation. He really ought to have kicked her out – he had said on that first day that anyone late would lose the day of instruction. Still, Caelum thinks bitterly, it's obvious to anyone that Rutherage likes the girl, which is why he lets her get away with it.

Potter rips him apart that morning, with her explanation of why marshmallow plant sap would not be an adequate substitution for honey in Wheezer's Relief, and it is then that Caelum begins to fear that she may be his equal.

* * *

She is already seated at her workstation, her nose in a Potions book, when he returns to the laboratory after lunch. He sneers at her – that a half-blood showed him up this morning, in Potions, which is _his_ , is contemptible, and he doesn't have anyone but himself to blame. Or her – it is her fault for being so… so…

He doesn't know. He hates her.

"Don't think your little act this morning fooled anyone, Potter," he says, stalking to his own station.

There is a pause before she responds, and even though her face doesn't show anything, Caelum knows he has upset her. "Should I know what you're talking about, or do you want me to guess?"

"I watched Master Rutherage lock the door this morning. The only reason he didn't kick you out for forcing your way in is because it would look like sexism if the only girl intern in the last decade of this program got kicked out the first week. They'll probably let you stay long enough to shut up the feminists, then get rid of you so that those of us with real talent don't have to accommodate a child's pace."

Potter's face is politely curious as she replies. "You think a child like me could overpower the Master's locking charm? It takes one and a half times the energy the caster put into the locking charm to unlock it."

Caelum didn't know that, and he feels his eye twitch. "I know that," he snaps instead, regardless of what he knows or doesn't know. "He must have underpowered it so that you'd be able to get in – like I said, they can't get rid of you _yet_."

"I wonder why he'd bother locking it at all, then," she says thoughtfully, her face carefully neutral. "It would be more defensible to simply 'forget' to lock it, don't you think?"

"What do you know?" he retorts. Not his best moment. He is normally wittier, snappier than that, and there's no surprise when Potter takes the opportunity.

"A lot of things," she says, serious. "Most of them having to do with potions. Believe it or not, Lestrange, I do actually belong here. And I won't be going anywhere anytime soon."

The words speak, perhaps, a little too closely to him, and he doesn't justify that with a reply. Instead, he snorts, and turns to his own workstation.

He sees Casillas' idiotic attempt to sabotage her, and seethes silently at the other intern. He would have thought Casillas would know better, after this past week – Potter's strengths are in her knowledge of potions ingredients, and in her lightning-fast ability to determine appropriate substitutes for ingredients. He could have, and should have, predicted that his trick would fail, and that it would only provide Potter with an opportunity to demonstrate her ability to react on the fly and still have the right result. In that moment, or perhaps in all moments thereafter, he hates Casillas.

She pulls it off, managing to make Jourdain's Amalgamation without the Madder root. No surprise, there.

Still, it isn't enough, because when the decisions come down, Caelum is working with Master Whittaker, an expert in Transformative Potions, and Casillas has Montmorency, known for his work in Healing Potions. And Potter is working with a nobody, Master Thompson. Caelum reads the potions journals, now, in two languages, and he doesn't remember any papers published by any Master Thompson.

There is still justice in the world, he thinks. Even the Potions Guild, however they have acted towards Potter to date, doesn't want to waste a proper Potions Master as a mentor for the halfblood girl. But another part, a quiet part that tells stories, whispers that, based on their last week's performance, this isn't really _fair_ –

He dismisses that part, the way he always has.

* * *

Caelum spends the weekend considering potential research topics. Master Whittaker is an expert in Transformative Potions, and obviously he should pick something in that area to best benefit from his expertise. He's fascinated by both Wolfsbane and Polyjuice, but Polyjuice is such an _old_ potion – it was developed in the thirteenth century, or thereabouts, and the body of research on the processes behind the transformation is enormous. There were, still, a few unanswered questions on it: how to control the length of time of a transformation, such that it could be used for more than an hour at a time; the effects of substituting newer ingredients that simply didn't exist in the thirteenth century; reverse-engineering the secret potion that the goblins used to break Polyjuice; the effects of long-term Polyjuice use. But Polyjuice also has a certain _dark_ reputation, because it is normally used for unsavoury activities, and Caelum is not an idiot. This is his first foray into serious academia, and he doesn't want to set himself an unsavoury reputation.

He has enough problems with that, given his name is _Lestrange_.

So, Wolfsbane it is, and there are so many interesting questions about it. It was only developed in the last decade, so the effects of long-term use are not understood. Partially, this is because the potion itself is incredibly expensive, and the werewolves who can afford it are rarely able to do so on a regular basis. He could work on ingredient substitutions, to try to find a way to decrease the cost, which would be both interesting and good for his academic reputation – if the potion were cheaper, then more werewolves could afford it. And the processes at work behind Wolfsbane, too, are not yet fully understood – the potion worked to keep a werewolf's human mind during transformation, but how? Was it more, or less, effective on magically powerful werewolves? Did the potion work with, or against, the werewolf's own magic? How did the potion, or simply the werewolf curse itself, work with blood identity? Only witches and wizards became werewolves – a Muggle, bitten by a werewolf, died. Was the potion more effective on purebloods than on half-bloods and Mudbloods?

There were so many questions he could consider, and he walks into Master Whittaker's office on Monday morning with a head full of ideas.

"Mr. Lestrange," he greets Caelum kindly. "Have you thought about your research topic?"

Caelum nods, a slight smile gracing his face. "I'd like to do a project on Wolfsbane, sir," he starts. "I know that it is a difficult subject, sir, but the potion itself is still a recent development, and there are a lot of things that still need to be researched. For example, it still isn't known how the potion works to allow the werewolf to keep his human mind during his transformation, or whether there are varying degrees of effectiveness, or how it interacts with the werewolf's own magic. I am thinking about examine the effects of Wolfsbane on long-term users, in the hope of being able to uncover some of the deeper processes at work."

"An interesting idea." Master Whittaker leaned forward over his desk, picking up a quill to take notes. "It would, though, need to be very limited – you must remember that you only have three months to come to any conclusions. A part of your research, though, must be experimental – how do you propose to experiment with Wolfsbane? Your project, proposed as it is, could be satisfied with a mere paper review and analysis, which is not the point of this internship. Further, as you know, there are not very many long-term users of Wolfsbane – the potion is, regrettably, still too expensive for many werewolves to afford on a regular basis."

"I am planning on starting with a paper review," Caelum agrees easily enough. "Once I have some initial analysis, I am planning on working on some substitutions which may amplify the effect that the existing potion has, depending on my findings. I will, of course, work with Aconite Alleviation instead of Wolfsbane itself, since Aconite Alleviation is more stable and less magically intensive, and most of the experimental results with Aconite Alleviation do translate to Wolfsbane."

Master Whittaker looks up from his notes, considering. "It's an ambitious project," he says slowly. "Can you really finish this in three months? And even Aconite Alleviation is an expensive potion, in terms of ingredients. Your intern's budget won't cover your materials."

"That is not a concern, Master Whittaker," Caelum reassures him quickly, sensing that it isn't a _no_. "I can afford the additional ingredients, and it is an important research topic. It is ambitious, Master Whittaker, but I think that at bare minimum I will be able to draw some conclusions on the paper review which, even if I do not make much headway on the experimentation, it will help other researchers in the field determine what ingredients might act to maximize, or minimize, the effects of Wolfsbane."

Master Whittaker thinks about it at length, and Caelum can tell that he is warring over the topic internally. On one hand, Wolfsbane is a difficult project, a big one, and Caelum only has three months to complete a project. On the other, it's an internship program, meant to inspire interns to become potioneers, and it is only a three-month project, and whatever Caelum comes up with, as long as it's not _wrong_ , would be published and would be good publicity for the Guild. In his turn, Caelum puts on his best serious expression, willing Master Whittaker to trust him with this project.

"All right," he says, finally, sighing and setting down his quill. "Begin your review. I will speak to the Aldermaster about whether he knows any long-term users of Wolfsbane."

"Thank you, sir", Caelum says, a true smile leaking onto his face as he rises from his seat.

"See me this time next week to report on your progress," Master Whittaker replies, already turning back to his work.

Caelum strides into the corridor, his smile still on his face, and walks upstairs towards the Guild library. He recognizes the shape in front of him – unruly dark hair, black potions robes, brown satchel – and his smile widens, turns into a smirk. Unless he has lost his ability to read a body posture, Potter is upset. A quiet voice in the dark of his mind warns him about approaching her – wasn't it just two days ago that he had thought she was competent, that he had thought Casillas to be an idiot for trying to sabotage her, that he had maybe, even, started to respect her?

 _Shut up,_ he tells the voice. Caelum is a pureblood, and she is not.

He falls into place beside her, matching her stride for stride, and is rewarded when she glimpses him and groans.

"What do you want, Lestrange?"

"So cold," he laughs. He sounds Bellatrix, then, cold and sadistic. It's her laugh, coming out of his mouth, and he hates it. But, he can't deny that it is perfect for this purpose; he knows how cutting it can be. "What's wrong, ugly duckling? Master what's-his-name not all you hoped for? Master Whittaker is wonderful – he spent all morning going over ideas of my project with me. We settled on Wolfsbane."

It's an overstatement, but Potter doesn't know that, and Caelum is rewarded with a start.

"Jealous, Potter? It _is_ a rather prestigious topic. Cutting edge. What have you decided on – going to develop a new prank potion?" He is careful to keep his tone mocking, not a hint of curiosity leaking into it.

"If I do, I hope you'll volunteer as test subject," she spits out at him. "Good _day,_ Lestrange."

* * *

He regrets it not even a week later. Of course, being that he had gone out of his way to tease her, of _course_ he would need to approach Potter for a favour that week.

The Aldermaster himself approaches him late on Thursday, a scroll in his hand. "Working on Wolfsbane, I hear?"

"I am, indeed, Master Hurst," Caelum replies, eyes lighting on the scroll. "It is such an important topic."

"I agree," the Aldermaster says amiably, offering him the scroll. Unfurled, it is a disappointingly short list – only a handful of names. "Master Whittaker asked me if I would be able to provide you with a list of long-term Wolfsbane users. This is a list of some of my clients who have agreed to provide you with the information you requested – I will let you know if I hear from any of the others. You might ask Harry, though, for information from her uncle, Remus."

Caelum nods and smiles weakly, pondering how, exactly, he is going to do that.

It's no surprise when Potter refuses to give him the information he needs, when he finally works up the courage to ask her about it on Friday. She barely gives him the time of day before she leaves, turning and walking out before he's even finished asking.

Probably shouldn't have insulted her before _,_ he thinks reluctantly, halfblood or not. He gave it up as a bad job, and resigned himself to using the data he had. If Master Hurst asked him about it, he would tell him that Potter refused to cooperate, and that was that.

* * *

It _is_ a surprise, a week later, when Potter interrupts him in his lab, handing him a list of traits for Remus Lupin, including both what he had asked for and a considerable amount of additional information, too.

"Sorry it took so long," she says, sounding not at all sincere. "I had to ask Remus whether he felt comfortable revealing personal information to a stranger."

He glares at her, suspiciously. On one hand, this would be a perfect opportunity to try to sabotage him, and if there's one thing that Caelum has learned in his life, it is about people. People take revenge over more minor slights than the kind of insults he gave her a week ago, and he can think of so many people who would do this – Casillas being a prime example. _Himself_ , being another.

On the other, glancing at the sheet, he thinks the data she has given him is in agreement with his other findings thus far, and they don't _look_ wrong, and somehow, in all of two weeks of knowing her, he almost sees some of himself in her. She is _like him_ , as awful as that idea is – she is a potioneer, and she doesn't _need_ to sabotage others to get ahead.

Almost. He is still a pureblood, and she is a halfblood, and that is a gulf that cannot be breached. Whatever the stories said.

"This is very detailed", he says. "I didn't ask for half of this."

She looks askance, openly sheepish. She's either a hell of an actress, or she's actually telling the truth. "I'm afraid I interrupted you before you told me everything you wanted, so I just included everything Remus and I thought you might need. If there's anything else, just let me know."

Caelum scowls at her. He's eager to get back to his research, especially if the new data is correct and not a trick, but one can never be too careful. "What is this? I suppose Renaldo put you up to this, and after I base all of my experimental data on this information I'll find out it's fake."

She simply looks at him, her very expression reminding him that she doesn't even talk to Casillas. "Look at the watermark on the parchment. It's the same parchment the Guild uses for recording experimental results, so you can't write data that's been knowingly falsified on it."

"Why are you doing this?"

She studies him for a moment before replying. "We're on the same side," she says. "If you make progress on the Wolfsbane potion, Remus and hundreds of other werewolves will be the one to benefit. If no one researches it, they will be the one to suffer."

"I find your sentimentality disgustingly naïve," Caelum snorts in reply, even as he hears an echo of himself, the part he doesn't hate, in her. They were researchers. _Potioneers_.

Pureblood. Halfblood. "We're not on the same side. We're _competitors_."

"We're _potioneers_ ", she corrects him, before launching into a lecture on Menesthes and Zosimos. Caelum hates being patronized, hates being lectured at by a half-blood girl, four years his junior but…

He's not an idiot. He was thinking it already.

It's several moments before Caelum can form a reply to her. It's not even a good reply, but there it is. "You're still a half-blood," he snarls.

"And you're still a jerk," she replies, before wishing him a good afternoon and disappearing.

* * *

Wolfsbane is both everything and nothing like he dreamed.

The potion is beautiful. There is no other word to describe it. The potion is intricate, woven lace. Each ingredient has a role, a place, a balance. Each ingredient there is necessary, in some way or another; each item, each step, does something to entice the stew of ingredients to the ultimate product. When he connects his core to it, it _feels_ full, satisfied, gorgeous. The steps, too, are a symphony – a delicate march leading to the crescendo that is Wolfsbane. Even Aconite Alleviation, while less elegant a solution than Wolfsbane, is a glory.

He spends the first week solely on literature review. He begins with the pioneering research report from Damocles Belby, followed by his numerous subsequent papers on his potion. Master Belby's reports, once he had finished developing Wolfsbane, largely focused on ingredient substitutions. He had always been concerned that his potion was too expensive, too far out of the reach of the average werewolf, who lived in poverty. While he had been successful substituting some ingredients for other ones, largely the potion became unstable and, after an unfortunate and powerful accident that destroyed half of his potions lab, Master Belby concluded that his concoction itself was close to perfect and moved on to other pursuits.

Other potioneers, including Masters Purdue and Abbott, known methodological researchers, had investigated whether any change in the order or the steps of the Potion would result in better effects. Mistress Vector, a known and respected Arithmancer, had collaborated with them and come to the conclusion that, from an arithmancy perspective, the number of stirs, counter-stirs, and brew time was near perfect – near, because she did think that some change in the length of brewing certain steps may improve effectiveness, but Master Abbott noted that her suggested improvements in timing couldn't be executed as certain ingredients needed to brew for a certain time before their poisons could be neutralized. Master Whittaker, too, had produced a review paper approximately five years ago summarizing the findings to date.

The only real progress began with Master Snape, who had the ingenious idea of turning to look at the preparation of ingredients. He did not release many papers, noting only that it appeared that ingredients picked or grown during certain times tended to lead to a more effective potion. His last major discovery, only two years ago, was that the Potion, made with wolfsbane picked during the new moon was most effective.

The difficulty with Master Snape's reports was that he often made assumptions that did not occur easily to others, and it was evident that he had also studied, at some length, the werewolf curse itself.

In frustration, Caelum turns to research on werewolf curse, luckily finding a thin tome on the subject without too much struggle. Really, he considers, he ought to have thought of doing this first – he was a fool to have thought he could make improvements on a potion that helped werewolves without understanding the condition.

The werewolf curse is a parasitic curse on a person's magic, he finds out. Its power waxes and wanes with the moon, and only on the full moon is it able to overcome a wizard's own core and force the werewolf transformation. The loss of power it suffered at the setting of the moon allowed the person's core to shake it off, resulting in the return transformation. Had the curse enough power, it was theorized that it would choose to force the witch or wizard to remain in wolf form permanently, suggesting that the curse worked _against_ a person's own magic. The fact that it was tied to the phases of the moon was its only weakness, and the main problem with curing the condition was that the curse itself latched itself so tightly in the person's magic, feeding on it to fuel the necessary transformations, that it could not be cured without removing the person's magic – a choice that was not only undesirable, but dangerous, as the newly wild magic was unstable.

This is why, he realizes, Master Snape has been able to realize some increase in efficiency with wolfsbane picked at the new moon. Wolfsbane is the natural opposite, the natural enemy of the werewolf curse, and it becomes powerful as the moon wanes.

He is curious about so many things. It seems that, whatever it is, Master Snape has hit on something – the cycle of the werewolf curse gaining and losing power with the moon shows that, if he can tie the ingredients to the cycle of the moon, then he could work on some changes in the efficiency of the potion. Tying the potion to the phases of the moon, though, could be a challenge for many of the ingredients – though plants could be tied simply by the timing that it was picked, other ingredients such as lacewing flies, beetle eyes, would not be so easily tied. He is curious, too, about whether there were ingredients that could, instead, maximize the power of a person's own core to fight the curse itself.

He wonders, too, whether someone's core levels would matter, the precise relationship of the parasitic relationship. Was it a linear escalation, where the curse's power would increase proportionately to a person's power? Or would it another kind of relationship entirely? Would a person near Squib levels suffer worse, or on the opposite end, no transformations? What about Lord-level werewolves? There were three types of magic, as well – physical, mental and aura. Did the curse affect only the physical and mental aspects, or would it affect the aura as well? What about people who had stronger aura or mental magics?

It is all so _fascinating_ , and the data he had collected from Master Hurst and the Potter girl gave him ideas for other ingredients, or at least other methods of ingredient preparations.

The cost of the ingredients, too, is far more than he expects. He knew it was expensive at the time he assured Master Whittaker that he would be willing to eat the cost, but it is, really, quite a lot more than he expects. The thirty Sickles that they are given as an ingredient budget only covers his first three cauldrons or so, and that's in ingredients alone. It is a good thing that the internship does pay its interns a living stipend, though that, too, is not enough. He knows that Casillas, from Spain, is using his stipend to rent a room in Diagon, and who knows what the Potter chit was doing with it. Still, he is thankful for the living stipend, particularly as he has not informed Bellatrix or Rodolphus of the matter and he is still living at Lestrange Manor throughout the summer.

That stipend is the only buffer he has for a year of experimentation, because he doesn't want to have to ask Bellatrix or Rodolphus for anything more than his yearly textbooks at Durmstrang. They make enough of a fuss about it as it is, for the cost of his international tuition, the cost of his textbooks that must be owl-ordered from St Petersburg. Any discussion of his potions experimentation would only lead to hours-long complaints about how ungrateful he was, about how he was a failure and it was money thrown away. He tries to avoid those, as he tries to avoid them, as much as possible. So the fact that he is spending more than thirty Sickles a week on ingredients, well… it doesn't sit very well with him. He has a year's worth of projects planned, too. It is in this very situation that Potter apparently catches him at Tate's midway through their internship, and he is humiliated for all of a day. He would have dwelled on it for far longer, letting his humiliation turn to fury, but he is distracted by something far more serious.

It is a Wednesday. The Guild, when he arrives, is full of milling reporters, talking to each other, waiting for something. A press conference?

He hears the harsh notes of Slavic languages nearby, and grabs a large, square-jawed reporter by the arm.

" _My apologies_ ," he says roughly, letting his accented Russian cascade off his tongue. " _Would you kindly tell me what is happening today?_ "

The man nods, gruffly, the light of respect in his eyes. The English wizarding community rarely learned other languages, and when they did, they normally went for creature languages such as Mermish or Gobbledegook, not the languages of other countries. It was one of the reasons that Bartemius Crouch Sr. was such an effective Head of the Department of International Cooperation – he could, and did, conduct his diplomatic missions in the languages of the countries he was in. " _Yes, of course._ _One of the English Masters has released a ground-breaking new paper on the Wolfsbane Potion. There is a special issue released today with the results; Master Snape will be making comments here shortly._ "

Caelum nods sharply in understanding, patting the reporter's shoulder once again, but all he can hear are the words swimming in his head. Wolfsbane Potion. Special issue.

 _Ground-breaking_.

 _Only the most ground-breaking of discoveries get special issues._

He walks briskly, purposefully, out of the Guild, in search of the paper in question.

* * *

He has arrived early enough that he is able to find the paper without much difficulty. Flourish & Blotts was out, as was Tate's Apothecary, and most of the street stands, but he managed to find one in an alley shop called the Serpent's Storeroom, just off Knockturn Alley. He spends the rest of his day poring over the new report, feeling his stomach drop.

Master Snape has done it. The research pushes on so many of his previous discoveries – tying the ingredient preparation to the cycle of the moon, working on alternate preparation of _ingredients_ instead of the preparation of the potion itself. There are, too, many other alternate preparations that had nothing to do with the cycle of the moon – mashing fire slugs, for example, appeared to increase the potency of the ingredient exponentially, which was done by doing so under a bright light, sunlight preferred. Master Snape theorized that the transfer of energies from the physical act of mashing the slugs combined with the natural energies from the light to effectively imbue the slugs with the magic of the sun, making the werewolf curse weaker.

The alternate preparations, though making some of the ingredients more expensive, would also lead to a decrease in the amount of imbued power necessary in the potion, which would keep the cost of the potion approximately the same; however, the increases in energy and the increases of effectiveness would mean that the potion was effective across all three nights of the full moon, and would only need to be taken once – cutting the cost, for the werewolf, to a third of what it was previously.

Master Snape has dramatically reshaped the way that werewolves would go on managing their disease. It would be as simple as one potion per month, taken on the first night of the full moon, and the werewolf would be able to keep his mind, curl up in his home, and sleep until morning. There are other diseases that take less management.

He regrets having chosen Wolfsbane – he is not stupid enough to have thought that he would have been able to make any truly ground-breaking discoveries this summer, but he had hoped, perhaps, that he would have been able to make some minor contribution, some minor footnote that was yet important enough to be mentioned in later reports. But after Master Snape's report, nothing he discovers will be important. Everything he could possibly discover, this summer, is moot – his internship is half over, and he doesn't have the _time_ , or the money, to reverse his course, redo his experiments, refocus his research on something new. Everything he could possibly do will be overshadowed, forever, by this report.

It is in his lab, several hours later, with the report still open in front of him and a sour look on his face, that Master Whittaker finds him.

"Lestrange," he begins, offering a copy of the same journal, which he drops immediately. "I see that you've managed to find yourself a copy of Master Snape's new research paper on Wolfsbane. I thought I would bring you a copy – most of these are sold out now."

Caelum nods, acknowledging the fact, without expression.

Master Whittaker sits down across the lab bench from him.

"I see you've read it already," he adds, inviting. Caelum, wordlessly, hates the invitation, seeing it for what it is. He doesn't want to _talk_ about it, but the silence stretches on, and he realizes that Master Whittaker isn't going to go away. He realizes, too, that as a potioneer, he cannot afford to offend the reputed Master.

"Yes, Master Whittaker," Caelum replies finally. "It changes everything with my research, doesn't it?"

Master Whittaker made a humming noise. "It does, certainly, but it also doesn't."

"Don't lie to me," Caelum snaps. "I'm not a fool."

Master Whittaker sighs, leans forward, an uncommonly severe look on his face.

"Mr. Lestrange, let me speak frankly. Master Snape's report is a ground-breaking discovery in the Wolfsbane Potion, one that will forever change the way that Wolfsbane is made and consumed. Starting henceforth, none of the regular brewers of this potion will be making it the old way, and yes, your experiments to today are going to be outdated. But, Mr. Lestrange, _these things happen in research_. Master Snape is brilliant – and he is not the only brilliant Master in the Guild working on Wolfsbane. You are not the only one whose research has been disrupted – there are at least four other Masters who are working on Wolfsbane, two of whom have been working on it for years, and they, too, have lost years to outdated work today. Research is always changing, and if you decide to stay with the Potions Guild and seek your mastery, these things will happen, time and time again. You need to be used to this, and you need to continue working on things for their own sake - not for any perceived glory or recognition. Otherwise, you may as well find alternate ambitions.

Your research was supposed to be focused on the long-term effects of Wolfsbane for regular users – Master Snape's research does not address that specifically. You may well still find something interesting, or useful, in that topic specifically. It seems to me that you have a choice, here – you can choose to finish your research and present it, whatever it may be, or you can withdraw from this internship now and leave off your ambitions for a Potions Mastery."

There is a long silence. Caelum processes it, and in that moment, he makes a choice.

Potions is all he has, all that he can say is _his_. Caelum is Potions, and he is hate, and if Potions are all he is except for hate, he will be a potioneer.

"Thank you, Master Whittaker," Caelum replies, in a tone he didn't know he had – bare of scorn, anger, bitterness, hate. There is only resignation, and a blank note of something he thinks might be determination. "I will focus on my research and continue my project."

Master Whittaker smiles. "Knew you had it in you," he says, patting him gently on the shoulder, before disappearing from the lab. Caelum turns back to his research schedule, revising it to _focus_ on his original topic, _focus_ on the long-term effects of the use of Wolfsbane, and by the end of the day is feeling much more even-keeled.

It occurs to him, later that evening, that Master Severus Snape is a halfblood.

* * *

The day of the Open House is warm, and Caelum is in his lab early to prepare. He has, he thinks, come up with a few interesting results, even if none of his experiments have been successful. Though, he sneers at himself, in research, even failure is a publishable result. He spends his time, instead, going over his speech – it is short, it is simple, and he works it over again and again to make sure that no hint, not a single sneer, comes through in his research. Maybe this research will forever be overshadowed by the magnitude of Master Snape's breakthrough, but he will go on that stage and pretend as if it didn't.

He will pretend, and if there's one thing he is good at other than potions and pain curses, it is playing pretend.

He hears Casillas' speech from his position in a dimly lit corner near the back of the stage. He hasn't bothered learning what either of his other two interns have researched, and in all honestly, he doesn't really care. It's no surprise to him, though, that apparently Casillas has decided to research extending the shelf-life of the Draught of Peace, because Casillas is an idiot.

Who would need to extend the shelf-life of the Draught of Peace? It was a thirty-minute brew, at most, difficult only because of the power and the intricacies of the steps required. It was a _difficult_ brew, yes, but it was not a _lengthy_ one. He had brewed it many times himself, for it was the only cure for the after-effects of the Cruciatus, and the reality was that if one really needed it, one could always take a Calming Potions, and brew the Draught of Peace afterwards.

What a waste of research. There were so many other potions which needed it more. Yet, he sees Casillas puff with pride when two Masters, evidently indulgent, asked him _questions_. Evidently, Casillas is an _oblivious_ idiot, and when Casillas smirks at him, as if daring him to do better, Caelum fights the urge to hex him.

Instead, he breathes in a single, deep breath. Today, Caelum is a potioneer, and he will not hex Casillas in front of a crowd of his future colleagues. He shakes himself, mentally, and makes a note to find a painful revenge for the fool another time.

And then, it is his turn to stride on the stage and present his research. It is only the first of many similar speeches, he tells himself, and he adopts the formal, polite manner which he has spent most of the morning developing. He will be a Potions Master, one day, and it will not do for his future colleagues to see his true, hateful, nature before he has established himself into the potions community.

"Thank you finding the time in your busy schedules to come, Masters, Mistresses," Caelum begins. Always best to begin by flattery, isn't it? There is a slight ripple of amusement throughout the room – not the worst start. "For my internship, I have been researching the long-term effects of the Wolfsbane Potion on long-term users."

"I will begin with a brief overview of the werewolf curse itself, before I begin my explanation of my findings. While I understand that this will be old news to many of you, unfortunately, my findings do not make sense without an understanding of the underpinning of the curse itself. The werewolf curse is, fundamentally, a curse that affects a person's magical core. Once bitten, any person possessing a magical core is affected. Muggles who are bitten do not suffer the same consequences – while most Muggles do not survive werewolf attacks for the simple reason that werewolf attacks occur in isolated regions, far from Muggle aid, the few historical Muggle survivors suffered no ill effects, other than scarring.

"The curse itself, once transferred onto a witch or wizard's magical core, is always there. The curse feeds on the magical core and, at the full moon, overrides the witch or wizard's own core and takes effect. The magic for the transformation is drawn from the moon, but is also fueled by the witch or wizard's own core. From the Healing perspective, this is as much as is known.

"The Wolfsbane Potion, particularly the New Wolfsbane, works by drawing out some of the power of the moon by amplifying the effects of natural enemies of the curse – sunlight, fire and wolfsbane – such that, tied to the moon as the curse is, the potion weakens the effect of the moon and allows a witch or wizard to retain their own minds. The witch or wizard still, however, transforms into a werewolf.

"From this theoretical underpinning, we can theorize that the werewolf curse affects at least two distinct parts of the magical core – a physical component, for the physical transformation, and a mental component, to force the witch or wizard to lose their minds during the transformation itself. It appears that while the curse feeds on a witch or wizard's core for the physical transformation, it feeds on the moon for the mental component.

"I postulated that, to fight the curse, a wizard with a strong working knowledge of mental magics or mental acuity would be more effective at fighting the curse over long periods of time. As you can see from the overview, here," he flicked his wand, which unleashed a stream of letters and numbers, "there is a correlation between a strong educational history, which includes number of OWLs gained or entry onto a Guild apprenticeship, and long-term survival."

He waved his wand again, and the numbers rearranged themselves. "There was, however, not a correlation between a witch or wizard's magical core strength and the effect of the transformation itself, suggesting that the curse draws whatever strength it needs from the core to force the transformation. Indeed, there may even a slight negative correlation between core strength and long-term survival, which I hypothesize relates to the violence of the battle between a witch or wizard's own core, and the werewolf curse."

Caelum took a deep breath. Here was the difficult part – for all of his experimentation, he had _nothing_ to show for it. He had no _results_ , only a sense of which direction to go in. "From all this, I would suggest that researchers look towards integrating ingredients to improve a witch or wizard's mental acuity, such as Billywig stings, skullcap flowers, or mulungu bark, into the Wolfsbane Potion for greater efficacy. Thank you."

He bowed, and waited for questions. There were only a few.

"Have you tried any of these integrations?" an older wizard asked. Caelum thought it was Master Wentworth – a specialist in potions of the mind.

"Yes, a few – I have tried passionflower and saffron flowers, but both, though mild, destabilized the potion."

"What would you suggest be the best ingredient to next try to integrate into the potion?"

That was Master Snape, and the question, while open and delivered in a tone of respect, is so clearly a throwaway one that it is obvious to Caelum that Master Snape only asks because of Caelum's position in society. Because Caelum is a pureblood, and a Lestrange, and because Master Snape, for all his intelligence and position in the potions community, is also a member of the SOW Party. It has nothing to do with Caelum himself – nothing to do with Caelum's work over the summer, nothing to do with Caelum as a _potioneer_. It is not like Master Wentworth's question, which at least arose from a genuine, if mild, interest – it is so clearly _patronizing_ , and Caelum hates it, and he hates Master Snape in that instance.

But he holds himself back, because this is his first foray into academia and he is good at playing pretend.

"I would suggest Billywig stings be attempted, sir," he replies, letting not a hint of anything other that gratitude ( _sweet, soft, gratitude_ ) drip from his voice. "They would make the potion more expensive, and would be difficult to integrate into the potion's matrix, but they are the most effective ingredient found to improve mental agility."

Master Snape nods, sharply, but frankly Caelum doubts he even heard the response. Snape has played his role – as a halfblood in the SOW Party, and as the foremost expert at the Wolfsbane Potion, he has paid the Lestrange Heir a compliment. And Caelum, too, plays his role – he accepts it with gratitude.

Everything is so fake, so perfectly false, and potions are real, and potions should not be a place he has to play this stupid game.

Caelum hates it, and the only good thing after that is that there are no more questions.

* * *

For her project, the Potter girl has _invented a whole new way of imbuing_.

Caelum thinks he ought to be shocked. This is wrong – all of it is wrong. She is a girl, she is thirteen, she is a halfblood besides. She shouldn't be able to make these discoveries. And yet, she does, and Caelum refuses to look away from reality.

Her method, if it can be recreated, is ground-breaking – well able to _broaden the definition of what can be considered a potion,_ in her own words, and _expands the possibilities of what a potion can do beyond currently accepted limits_.

He ought to be shocked, and he isn't, if only because Harriett Potter has shocked him so many times this summer that he's simply done being shocked by whatever she does.

Harriett Potter is a halfblood, and she is a potioneer, and she is _good at what she does_.

Master Snape, too, is a halfblood, and he is a potioneer, and he is the foremost expert in the field about the Wolfsbane Potion.

Caelum hides his thoughts, as he has so many other times, puts them aside to examine later. Instead, he smiles, a perfectly fake smile, and lets himself be distracted from packing his lab by his mentor.

"A very good presentation," Master Whittaker says, smiling and shaking his hand. "Regardless of the situation, you made very good progress with your project, and I am impressed. I take it none of your experiments worked out, then?"

"No, Master Whittaker," Caelum replied, perfectly poised. "The Wolfsbane Potion is so complex – I do think that it can be done, but it would take more time, or a binding agent."

"Still, the fact that you managed to come to findings that other potioneers can work on is wonderful, simply marvelous and a wonderful demonstration of your potential."

"I thank you, Master Whittaker," Caelum bows slightly in thanks – the standard fifteen degrees of a pureblood Heir to a Guild Master. It is a bigger compliment that he expected, and despite himself, he is flattered.

"Very good work, Mr. Lestrange. I'll look forward to your application for apprenticeship."

"I look forward to sending it, Master Whittaker."

With one last nod, Master Whittaker is gone. Finally.

Caelum breathes out, a deep sigh, settling down into his packing. He liked this lab, he thinks – bare stone walls, yes, but clean and well-lit in a way that neither the Lestrange nor the Durmstrang labs were. The Durmstrang labs were small, serviceable, but somewhat outdated in terms of space and ventilation. His lab in the Lestrange Manor simply didn't bear thinking on. It was well hidden in the Manor's cavernous basements, and even if it was set up in the way he likes, it had no embedded light spells or safety features for true experimentation. He will miss these labs.

It is only for a year, he reminds himself. Unless he misses his guess, Master Whittaker intends on pushing his application for apprenticeship forward. If he is lucky, he will get a good Master to work under and will have full access to these labs again. And even if, in England, he cannot move out of the Lestrange Manor without political fallout, he at least will have a place to go, to stay, if he brews too late.

He looks forward to brewing too late, too often.

 _Sentimentality,_ he chides himself, shaking his head. He can't afford it.

There is a knock at the door, and he sighs, opens it without thinking. Perhaps it is Master Whittaker again, or one of the other Guild staff to tell him to finish packing and leave – ever so politely, of course.

Instead, it is Potter.

"What?" he snaps, or he tries to.

She shrugs, forces her foot into the door and strides in past his indignant huff. "I'm glad I caught you," she says, turning to face him.

"What do you want, Potter?"

Her green eyes are searching, inquiring. He doesn't like it.

"Just to tell you how much I liked your final presentation," she says.

"Don't bother." He turns away from her, back to his bench and his box of belongings. A wave of his wand, a muttered Slavonic incantation, and it's small enough to put into the pocket of his robes. "I know no one was listening. The showcase was a waste of time. Anyone important will just read the reports."

"I was listening," she disagrees stubbornly. "As were many others. You got some good questions at the end."

"I got some _patronizing_ questions at the end," he sneers, without the heat. "You were too busy preparing for your presentation to listen to mine, anyway."

"Not so," she replies. "I thought you made a really insightful point about the connection between long-term survival and mental acuity. Too many people overestimate the role of physical health in werewolf health – it's important, but not as important as mental agility and sheer willpower. The curse affects the mind of a werewolf even more than it does the body."

Caelum scowls. "Maybe you were listening, then. Doesn't mean anyone else was."

"Even if no one listened, it was a good presentation."

He scowls more at her. There is silence, and he waits for her to leave. She doesn't.

"Thanks," he says, biting the word out. It is heavy, a block dropping from his lips, and it doesn't sound thankful. Maybe now she will leave him to his brooding.

"You're welcome."

Another silence. "Is that all?" he says, glancing towards the door.

"No," she replies doggedly. What is she – a sadist? Surely even a halfblood can tell that he wants her to leave. Or maybe she is a masochist – surely there is no other reason she would want to stand in his presence?

"I'm going to grab a bite to eat—"

"Good for you."

"And I'm inviting you."

Another silence. She _is_ a masochist.

"I notice you didn't claim you'd _like it_ if I came along," he replies pointedly, and sighs tiredly. "Go home, Potter. Go home, and go have dinner with your precious family, so they can all tell you how _proud_ they are of you."

He fights to keep notes of bitterness out of his voice, and covers it up with a derisive snort, instead. Potter _should_ just go home – back to her warm family, back to love and warmth and kindness, away from him. Him, with his hate, his bitterness, his anger.

She studies him, instead, her green eyes examining, glinting. She is thinking, but he doesn't dare guess the topic. If there's anything he has learned this summer, it is not to guess anything about Harriett Potter.

"I could," she says finally, slowly. "But I'd rather have dinner with someone who understands what I've spent all summer doing, rather than someone who's proud of the _idea_ of what I've been doing."

Caelum purses his lips, stares at her, examining her as she does him. Her green eyes, huge, show her slow realization that what she said was _true_ , _true and not false_ , and he waits. So what if it's true? Even if it's true, there are other people. There is her cousin, Rigel Black, by all accounts as good at potions as she is, and he was there, wasn't he, in the back of the crowds, standing with her family? Master Thompson, too, clearly developed a liking for her over the summer. And she always took off for lunch, and he had seen her with other friends in Diagon Alley. A tall, tanned boy, broad-shouldered, a bit older.

She's a halfblood. Impure. Even if he can feel her emotions in the air, her soft consideration, the purity of her intent, he can't agree to this. Even if she's real, and even though he's never felt more real than at this moment, in this potions lab, away from the games, away from the politics, away from being a Lestrange – he doesn't want to think about this anymore. He can't think about this anymore.

So he waits – he waits for those expressive green eyes to realize that this is a bad decision, that inviting _Caelum Lestrange_ to dinner is a mistake. He waits, and he waits, and as the silence stretches between them he realizes that, for whatever reason, _it isn't coming to her._

He sniffs. "I don't date halfbloods." Another pause. "Or children, for that matter."

Potter's nose, pert, delicate as any English pureblood's, wrinkles in distaste. "And I don't date bigots."

"You don't date anyone."

"Neither do you," she retorts. "So I guess it's a good thing that it isn't a date. It's just _dinner_ , Lestrange. Or would you rather go home?"

Caelum's eyes snap away from hers, and he turns away.

"I don't need your fucking pity," he snaps.

"It's not pity," she says, and she's lying. He glares at her. She grimaces, caught. "I'd like to be friends."

"I don't have friends," he retorts. Lestranges don't have friends. They have allies, because friends are too hard to betray.

"Maybe that's your problem."

Her voice is low, soft – almost vulnerable. He narrows his eyes at her – what is she playing at now?

"Look, I don't have any friends who brew, either. Wouldn't it be nice to talk to someone about potions after this internship is over?"

"I'm not being friends with a halfblood," he says, blunt. He's not being friends with _anyone_.

"Pretend I'm a pureblood," she says, rolling her eyes. Ridiculous.

"That's absurd," he scoffs.

"Not really." She smiles, then, a light, mocking smile. "My kind doesn't look any different than yours. Actually, I _am_ a pureblood – didn't I tell you? My mother is descended from a very old, very respected pureblood family that was thought to have died out a few generations ago. It turns out my great-grandmother was her Squib descendent…"

"You can't just make up things like that," he snaps, but she's already turning him towards the door to the lab.

"Sure I can. It could be true," she blinks innocently up at him. Big, green eyes – full of amusement, mirth, barely recognizable to him. "Pureblood families don't keep track of their Squib children very well, if they keep track of them at all after leaving them on some Muggle's doorstep. I might be more pureblooded than you, Lestrange!"

"Just stop," he groans. He can't handle this new Potter – light, laughing, amused. She's having _fun_ , and he's damned if he knows why. She's light, and he's dark. She's a Potter, and he's a Lestrange. She's a halfblood, and he's a pureblood. "You're giving me a headache."

"It's probably a hunger headache," she replies cheerily, shooing him towards the door. "Come on, Lestrange, let's get you something to eat."

"I'm not eating dinner with you."

"Yes, you are," she nearly hums, as amused as she is. "If you don't, I'll tell everyone you did anyway."

"Who would you tell?" he snorts. "Even your Mudblood friends wouldn't believe you."

"I'll tell my cousin Rigel, who will tell all his friends at Hogwarts, who will in turn tell their parents, who will ask your parents why you're such good friends with a halfblood, and then what will you say? That Lucius Malfoy was lying?"

He gaps at her, stopping in his tracks. As lightly as she says it, he knows she has no idea what she's said – no one has any idea, no one should have any idea, and he doesn't hold that part against her, not really. But his mind is already whirring through the envisioned scenario. He doesn't dare believe she wouldn't do it – she would do it, if only because she doesn't know anything about him, because for her it's all innocent, but for him? Maybe he would tell Bellatrix that Lucius Malfoy was lying, and maybe Bellatrix would even believe him, but it would be at least three Cruciatus curses just to get there, and that would be the best scenario.

The first Cruciatus would be because she heard it from someone, believed it and needed to punish him. He would use that to scream his denials, and if she were in a good mood, she would let up after five to seven minutes. Maybe ten. He could do ten of Cruciatus without breaking, and the bitch knew it. She wouldn't break him, not really, not when the House of Lestrange needed its Heir. So that would be the first Cruciatus.

A break of five minutes, and the second wave would begin. It would hurt more, the second time – it always did, because even if bones never broke during Cruciatus, it always fucking felt like they did, and that wouldn't go away with only a five-minute break. The second Cruciatus curse would be because she would need to know whether he was telling the truth.

All the studies showed that confessions under Cruciatus were unreliable at best, but his mother had never read those studies, and never would. Bellatrix was intelligent enough, in an utterly mad way, but she was not an academic. She wanted to believe that torture worked, so it did, for her. The second Cruciatus would last ten minutes, throughout which he would scream his denials louder, if he even could, because he has long since learned that he will confess to anything under Cruciatus, because he is not predictable under Cruciatus. He will soil himself in the second wave, and his mother will sniff in disgust at him, because only the weak do that.

He wants to put her under Cruciatus one day, see how she fares. He _will_ put her under Cruciatus, one day.

The second Cruciatus would last ten minutes, maybe eleven, right to the boundaries of breaking. He would get a slightly longer break, then – a longer break to pant, to prepare. During his break, he will listen to her mad ranting. Either she will believe him, in which case she will decide to warn him against pursuing a friendship with the Potter chit, and this is the best-case scenario. In this case, she won't push him too far in the third wave, only four or five minutes, and he can do four or five minutes of torture without shaming himself too horribly.

In the worst-case scenario, she will decide that he is lying, or that he is guilty of the crime, and he will have at least one more ten, eleven-minute wave to get through. At least one. Perhaps more.

And at the end of the whole ordeal, he will crawl down to the cellars, while she fires stinging hexes, cutting hexes at him, and he will take a Calming Potion, to control his tremors, his fear, his panic, and he will brew the Draught of Peace, the only known cure to the after-effects of the Cruciatus, if he can. The Draught of Peace is an expensive potion, mainly in ingredients, and even if he can afford it now, with the stipend from the internship, he has _plans_ for those funds, god damn it, and they are there to let him brew – as much as he wants, as often as he wants, for the next year.

The moment the threat is made, she has him trapped.

She doesn't know, and she shouldn't know, and he doesn't want her to know, and he doesn't have any grounds to hate her for this, but he does. He hates her, a quick, blinding flash of hatred, for all that she _doesn't know_.

"You – you really would, wouldn't you? Crazy bitch."

She rolls her eyes, again. "The insults get boring after awhile, Lestrange. Just come eat with me. You might even enjoy having someone to argue with over dinner."

"Why are you so determined to do this?" he complains, sighing. He might hate her for this, but she doesn't know, and he doesn't want her to know – she's too young, too innocent, too pure in her intent, and he feels the rage, the hate, seep away. Maybe if he knows _why_ , he can put a stop to all of this before it happens, and he can be left alone in his hate.

She thinks. "I don't like having enemies," she says, eventually. "The more enemies I can turn into friends, the easier my life will be in the long run."

"I'm not going to make your life any easier," he argues. "I'm never going to make your life any easier."

"You might stop making it more difficult eventually, though," she replies.

"You're just trying to assuage your ridiculously maudlin conscience by pretending to be nice to me."

"So what?" she shrugs, grins cheekily. "Say you're right. You should still come and get free food out of it."

"I don't need charity," he says, exasperated. Even if he, himself, doesn't have money, the house-elves at Lestrange Manor always make sure he's well-fed.

"Never hurts, though, doesn't it?" she replies, opening the door for him. "Come on, it won't take long."

He stares at her, frustrated with the volume of words he has backing his throat. Why is she doing this? Why, of all people, has this crazy girl decided to have dinner with _him_? Why is she so adamant on this? What about him has ever said to her, _you should get close to me_? He is pureblood, but he is a bad idea, a nightmare of anger and bitterness and hate, and this intelligent, bright, halfblood should be smart enough to read the signs.

Intelligent halfblood. A few months ago, and those two words would have never crossed his mind together.

"Tell you what," she says, waiting with the door open for him. "You come eat with me, and if you can convince me by the end of the meal that it was a bad idea, I'll never bother you again."

He smirks at her, then, a harsh laugh bursting from his lungs. "It _is_ a bad idea. You're inviting me to torture you for the rest of the evening."

Her smile is saccharine, and so perfectly fake that Lestrange is impressed in spite of himself.

"I'm inviting you to _try_."

* * *

She takes him to an alley several turns off Knockturn Alley. With every turn, Caelum is surprised. Where would Potter have learned this? For all that she is a halfblood, she is the heiress to House Potter, nobility. There is no way that any noble parent would have let their daughter wander this far away from the main alleys, and yet…

And yet Potter walks these alleys like she belongs here.

He doesn't miss the fact that her eyes scour the streets cautiously – not looking for anyone in particular, just a general wariness and sure tread of confidence. When they get there, Aroma Alley, she calls it, he is at first simply stunned. There were eateries upon eateries, and the smells drifting out of each one was better than the last. She leads him to a Chinese restaurant, tucked between two Italian eating houses, and motions for him to enter first.

"If this is a trap, my mother will torture you into insanity," he informs her bluntly. It's a simple fact – for all his mother hates him, he _is_ the Lestrange Heir.

"Okay," she replies faintly, and maybe, between his utter seriousness and the simple, emotionless imparting of fact, Caelum thinks, just maybe, he has made an impression. This crazy halfblood girl shouldn't want to have anything to do with him.

It doesn't seem to matter, though, because by the time they are seated at the table, she's regained her equanimity.

He orders swordfish – it is an expensive fish, but if she is paying, he may as well enjoy something he doesn't normally eat. He likes swordfish, besides. She doesn't blink, simply orders a plate of pork dumplings for herself. The waiter leaves a pot of tea.

"We didn't order tea," he says, blinking after him.

"It's free," Harry says, pouring two teacups and sipping hers. "Anyway, what do you care? I'm paying."

"It's just poor business practice to give away things unprompted."

"Know a lot about business, do you?" She smiles over the top of her teacup. It's scalding.

"Of course, I do," he scoffs. He doesn't, really, but she doesn't need to know that. And business can't be that difficult to understand – it's not like Potions. Business is just people, and he knows people. "My father and uncle together own more businesses than the Zabini family."

"Then you know that the principle of reciprocity compels people to feel beholden when given something for nothing, prompting them to be overly generous in turn. Because he gives the tea for free, he gets better tips, and the restaurant earns more in general."

"But since we are aware of this tactic, it fails. He gets nothing more than he would have."

"Maybe if you were the one paying," Harry replies. "I quite appreciate the free tea."

"Your Good Samaritan act is making me sick," he says. He is toying with his chopsticks – careful to make it look absent-minded, without thought, but he's skimmed the short blurb on how to use them and is working it out. He's never used these thin wooden sticks before.

"I'll eat your fish if you don't feel up to it," she says, falsely sympathetic – so transparent, of course, that it's an invitation.

"Doesn't it ever get tiresome, being so pointlessly _nice_ all the time?"

"Doesn't it ever get tiresome being a jerk?"

"I'm not a jerk," he replies, his eyebrows rising.

She waits a beat, staring at him as if she cannot believe her ears. "You… you sort of are."

He shrugged. "Only to those who deserve it." Which, granted, was pretty much everyone.

She snorted. "Don't try to justify it like that – like you're mean to people for their own good. You just do it to satisfy something inside yourself."

That hits, maybe, a little too close to home. "So what?" he snaps. "Maybe you're right. That doesn't mean I'm not right, too. Most people do deserve it."

"Including me, I suppose?" Her voice is sarcastic, her face scornful.

"Yes, including you," he replies, leaning in to her, his gaze sharp. " _Someone_ had to wake you up to reality. Admit it. You walked into that lab on the first day thinking no one would care you were a girl, that you were a halfblood, that you were years younger than all the other applicants. If you listened to me right off, you would have suspected that Casillas would try to blow up your cauldron." Even if he was too stupid to do it properly. Jourdain's Amalgamation, of all things.

She turns his glare back on him. "If I listened to you, I would have gone home before I started."

He smirks. "That, too. No harm intimidating the competition while I'm doling out life lessons, is there?"

She laughs, then, in his face. "I suppose you've never heard what Muggles say about living in glass houses?"

"Why would anyone build a house out of something so fragile?" He wrinkles his nose, shaking his head. "Stupid muggles."

"I mean, do you really think you're the one best qualified to judge others?"

"If not me, then who?" His voice is bitter, now. He doesn't like it, but then, evidently, he's not putting her off anyway. He may as well be real. "Most people are too busy being polite to really take a hard look at the world around them, at the people around them. All the idiots and pigs continue to be so because no one wants to risk unpleasantness to tell them what's what. I, on the other hand, am perfectly accustomed to _unpleasantness_ , so I don't care if everyone hates me, so I'm not afraid to say what I think."

It's a lie. He is afraid – he is afraid all the time. He is, if not the perfect Lestrange Heir, close. He pushes the line, sometimes, a little – he hides his hands in noble gatherings as he pleases, because no one dares say anything about that, but he does what Bellatrix wants. He dances, as Bellatrix wants. He bows and scrapes and abides by all the perfect little pureblood etiquette rules. His revenges, the moments when he is bare, cruel, are secret from the powers that be in the pureblood world. And at Durmstrang, he doesn't talk to anyone. He doesn't even want to talk to anyone, so what would he say?

So maybe what he says, there, is a wish, a dream. He wishes he could say what he thinks, all the time. Instead, he only says it to her, because he is here to torture her for an evening.

"What if what you think is wrong?"

"Then someone better have the balls to tell me so." He smiles at her, mocking. "How else will I learn?"

She narrows her eyes at him. "What about Rigel Black?"

He scowls at her, blindsided. "What about him?"

"I heard you were perfectly horrid to him the first time you met," she scowls back. Protective of her _cousin_ , then, wasn't she? "How can you have judged him so quickly?"

"Rigel Black is an idiot," he replies, and sees her open her mouth to retort. "No – don't interrupt. You asked, so I'm telling you. He showed up at a Dark pureblood event like he wasn't the son of a traitor. Did he really think no one was going to say anything? He didn't belong there, no matter whose children he goes to school with. His naivete was sickening, so I did him the courtesy of saying it to his face, while so many would only whisper behind his back."

"You should get to know Rigel," she says, studying him. "He's not as naïve as you think."

"Then he's a knowing idiot – how grand," he drawls in reply. She sighs, and their food arrives, and there is silence while they both eat. The swordfish is, he thinks almost grudgingly, very good.

"Are you going to continue your Wolfsbane research?" she asks, eating her dumplings delicately.

"What's the point? Snape's breakthrough changes the whole field. My research is already outdated."

"It's not outdated until there's a cure," she scowls at him. Cute.

"There's never going to be a cure," he snorts. "Your fag uncle is going to be a werewolf forever, so get used to it."

She flicks soy sauce at him. "You don't know that, just like you don't know my uncle is a homosexual. This is what I mean – you're not telling the truth now, you're just being ugly."

She says so, but she doesn't even sound angry.

"I'm really too pretty to be ugly," he smirks.

"You're really not," she mutters, taking another dumpling.

"Anyway, a lot of people assume your uncles are lovers, or didn't you know?"

"Remus and Sirius?" She shakes her head. "Who thinks that?"

"People with too much time on their hands," he replies, disgusted. "But people whose opinions, unfortunately, mean something. Me repeating them just makes you aware of them, so you can deny them in the open if you want."

"Stop," she says, exasperated. "You can't justify meanness. Just admit it – you can't go an hour without belittling someone."

"I do admit that," he replies easily. "There are just so many people in the world to be belittled, and so little time, really. This fish isn't bad."

"Careful, Lestrange, that was almost a compliment."

"I'm perfectly capable of compliments."

"Do another one."

"One's my daily limit," he rolls his eyes.

"I don't believe you," she sniffs, smirking. "There's no way you give a compliment every day."

"You'll never know," he sniffs, not daring to think that whatever this is, he is amused. He is enjoying this, and the sensation is almost foreign. He likes potions, enjoys potions more than most, but enjoying himself with another person? Other people have never been amusing. "I don't compliment halfbloods."

"I'm secretly a pureblood, remember?"

"You're secretly _annoying_."

"I grow on people."

"I bet people just tell you that, so you'll go away."

A pause. She's thinking, her head tilted slightly to one side. "I guess I won't know until _you_ say it. You'd never lie to me, would you, Lestrange?"

He gives her a smile, a perfectly fake and saccharine smile that is a perfect copy of the one she gave him. "Everybody lies," he says.

She shrugs.

"What, goodie girl agrees with me?" He looks her over, speculative. He's curious, but he doesn't ask. Everyone has secrets. "Well, what are _you_ lying about, then?"

She smiles back at him, a perfectly fake smile. "Fish aren't really lucky to eat in China," she lies through a perfectly earnest face, and their fake smiles break into real ones.

"Maybe you really do grow on people. Brat." He takes another bite of his swordfish. "So why are you really here with me, and not at home? As far as I can see, your parents adore you – didn't you see them there today, smiling like fools when you presented? I bet they're so _proud_ of you – Bet they think you're so _perfect_. Why are you sitting here, perfect girl?"

"They are proud of me," she nods in acknowledgement. "But they would be proud no matter what I did. In some ways, they don't care what I do."

"Lucky you," he mutters, stabbing at his fish with the chopsticks. The things are surprisingly easy to use. "Your parents pay for your _potions indulgence_ , then?"

"Yeah. Yours don't?"

He doesn't want her pity. "I get what I ask for," he shrugs. He doesn't ask for much, though – he doesn't dare. Maybe if he did, maybe if he had parents like hers, he would be so much farther along in his studies. Maybe, then, he, too, would have been an intern at thirteen.

He refuses to feel jealous, but from the expression on her face, she's understood anyway.

"So what do you do when you aren't brewing?"

"None of your business. Why, what do you do?"

She laughs, then. "I don't do anything besides brew."

"Really?" Even then, he's skeptical, but what a dream that would be, wouldn't it?

"What else is there?"

"What else, indeed?"

So maybe he hates her a little less, by the end of the night. She's rolled her eyes and told him that no, she won't tell Rigel about the dinner, and he's suitably threatened her, and all is appeased.

He isn't sure of she's sufficiently scared off him, though. More frightening, he isn't altogether sure he wants her to be.

* * *

Another month, and he's back at Durmstrang, settling himself in for another year in his private laboratory. He's finished the Durmstrang Potions curriculum already, so this year, Master Kolos has permitted him to independently study the subject in a small laboratory set off the main dungeons. He'll be allowed to study whatever he wishes, so long as he advises Master Kolos beforehand, and quite frankly, he is looking forward to it – particularly the fact that, since he is technically doing this under the auspices of his Durmstrang education, they will be _paying_ for most of his brewing ingredients.

He plans on toying around with more Healing and Strength potions, this time around. Strengthening Solution, such a simple brew, was really only good for physical strength, and he would like to turn something like that into one for mental fortitude. There were any number of Wit-Sharpening Potions or the like, but he didn't want one that made one _smarter_ , or _cleverer_ , or anything like that. There were, too, potions that helped to heal one's mental connections and brain function from mental illness. But none of those fit the bill.

Truth be told, he wanted something to combat the _onset_ of insanity. One of the best-known effects of Cruciatus was that, once trained on a witch or wizard for too long, it would cause incurable insanity. The physical effects could always be remedied by a Draught of Peace, which soothed the physical panic, the magical panic that one experienced, and to some degree it must assault the mental centres holding such things. But there were no potions that could fully heal the _madness_ that resulted from the Cruciatus curse. In some ways, perhaps it would be easier to study the potions intended to heal mental damage, but that, too, wasn't really what he was looking for.

He was looking for something that would prepare the mind the accept the pain of a Cruciatus attack, one that would make the mind malleable enough to _accept_ the pain, but not to break. Essentially, a mental equivalent to the Strengthening Solution – that seemed like an adequate way to spend the year.

It is mid-October when he receives the letter from his godfather, one Augustus Rookwood.

 _Caelum,_

 _I hope your term is going well._

 _I understand you interned over the summer with one Harriett Potter. She claims to have invented a new way of conscious imbuing, which would imbue an already shaped spell into a potion, and has provided the Department of Mysteries with a number of samples. While I am somewhat skeptical in whether she has truly imbued shaped magic into her potions, it is evident that her potions do not reflect any known result, and they each do as she says; her Modified Weightless Draught, for example, does show the effects of a Hover Charm as promised. Similarly, her Ward-Maker potion does create a ward, which is not explained by any of the ingredients in the potion itself._

 _I am writing to inquire as to whether you have any insight into Miss Potter's research over the summer. Do let me know._

 _Regards,_

 _Augustus Rookwood._

Caelum thinks, staring at the letter, but can see no hint that his godfather knows anything about him or about his meetings with Potter. It is not really a lie to say he does not know – he was forced into having dinner with her only once, and spent most of it torturing her. In no part of their conversations did the question of her research come up.

 _Godfather,_

 _My apologies. I do not have any information about Potter's research other than what was reported in the Guild newsletter. Potter is much younger than I, and a halfblood besides. We did not talk._

 _Your godson,_

 _Caelum Lestrange._

It is only three days when he receives another letter.

 _Caelum,_

 _I understand. Would you kindly write to Miss Potter and request further information? Although she has sent us detailed notes, we are not able to recreate her results. Perhaps if a fellow intern, closer in age, approaches her, she may provide more information._

 _Regards,_

 _Augustus Rookwood_

The letter is short and to the point, and Caelum scowls. He does not like being pushed into doing anything, but the Rookwoods are fairly close allies to the Lestrange Family, and if he refused surely Bellatrix would hear of it.

* * *

It takes him a day before he has a letter he's willing to send to her. It's not a friendly letter, not really, but it's not too cruel either because he does want her to send a copy of her notes. And, dare he say it, he's even somewhat curious as to what she's been doing since the end of the summer. She goes to a school in America, he knows, since with her heritage she wouldn't be allowed at Hogwarts, and he is even mildly curious as to the education she receives there.

Surely nothing that an American wizarding school, open to all, without regard to blood purity, could not progress so fast as a school like Durmstrang. Not when they would need to teach everyone from the bare minimum, from Lumos charms to levitation charms, not when they would have to teach Mudbloods which way to hold their wands, how to stand a cauldron upright. He's surprised, really, that American schools seem to complete their curriculums in only seven years, like the European schools; but then, so few American witches and wizards obtained further learning after school, so obviously the training was just not up to par to entry into the Guilds, into further education.

And yet, there was Harriett Potter – whatever she had done this summer, it was _something_.

It's a week before he hears back from her, a short, terse note. She ignores most of his letter, only stating that he sounded desperate for attention ( _he did not_ ), congratulates him perfunctorily on his new summer internship ( _it's not an internship_ ), and provides him a complete, thorough set of notes on her methodology. He makes a copy of the notes to study himself ( _not that he would tell her_ ) and sends the rest to his godfather.

* * *

By the time the Christmas holidays rolls around, Caelum has, he thinks, a working prototype. The key was to take out the ingredients that increased physical strength and stamina, and to replace them with the same type of ingredients as found in the Draught of Peace, in similar proportions. It is, he thinks, almost a hybrid of the two – it is the foresight of Strengthening Solution, combined with the potency of the Draught of Peace.

He carefully bottles up five individual doses – the same dosages as he would use for himself for the Draught of Peace. Four doses he puts into his trunk, which he shrinks to fit into his pocket, the other he keeps in his pocket.

The door out his private laboratory, fifteen steps across the Potions classroom, a corridor out of the Durmstrang dungeons and a flight of stairs up into the Great Hall. He joins the throngs of students waiting, in groups, ready to Floo to their home countries or cities, as the case may be, through the great fireplace, the centrepiece of the Great Hall and the only fire in Durmstrang that is normally lit. They go in alphabetical order – the Armenians, Azerbaijanis, the Belarussians are gone, and the Bulgarian group stepping up to fireplace. There will be the Georgians next, the Kazakhs, the Kyrgyz, the Lithuanians and Latvians, the Moldovans. The Russians leave en masse, in several groups – Irkutsk, Kazan, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Volgograd, Vladivostok – and Caelum, alone, steps up between the Ukrainians and the Uzbeks. He tosses the potion back as he walks through the flames.

The sweet and sour taste of the potion is on his lips, and a relaxed, breezy _nothingness_ invades his mind as he walks into the Lestrange formal dining hall. It is dark, and Bellatrix is waiting.

* * *

 _Test # 1_ , he writes shakily, under the effect of both the potion of his own invention and a Calming Potion. He is shaking, but mentally feels somewhat less shattered than previous. The Draught of Peace, a true Draught of Peace, is simmering in the cauldron. He is still wearing the same robes – he has not shamed himself, this time, because she only felt that one round was appropriate – but there would be more. She's promised at least one before the Gala, to ensure that he behaves the perfect Lestrange Heir, and there will probably be at least one after. And that's if she's otherwise happy throughout the break.

At what point did his mother become so _boring_? He wonders. She used to be so creative, so inventive in her petty revenges. She used to have _variety_ , and she used to play with cutting curses, flagellation curses, whipping curses, bombardment hexes. She used to use babbling hexes, cheering charms, to embarrass, humiliate. When did it simply become Cruciatus, over, and over, and over again?

In some part of himself, Caelum is disappointed. She is becoming predictable, and he can anticipate, plan for her. The rest of him is simply pleased that, at least, he knows exactly what he's going to get, and that he can plan things like _this_ , to spare his sanity. Not that Bellatrix would ever really intend on seriously threatening his sanity, because he is the Lestrange Heir and Bellatrix has long since made clear that she has no plans on delivering another child. And his father, his weak, pitiable, father, loves her too much to do anything but indulge. But Bellatrix, too, is mad – and mistakes can happen.

He considers himself, considers the simmering cauldron in front of him, and goes back to taking notes. He is not mad, and he _feels_ more stable than he normally does after the torture curse, but that could, too, be placebo effect. He would need further testing on this point – today's torture was too short for him to see a marked difference. It is good at that Strengthening Potion did keep well, and his variation on it, too, kept fairly well, so he could always carry a dose with him. There are side effects that he wishes weren't there, though – the potion made him feel light-headed, made him feel like that class in fourth year Dark Arts when they practiced Imperius curses. Carefree. Light, breezy. That was too dangerous, for this kind of potion – in that mood, one could not truly control what one said, and he made a note to try to integrate some of the ingredients of the Wit-Sharpening Potion. He needed to stay in control of his faculties, even if his mind became more malleable to accept the pain.

He had the oddest thought, then – what would Potter think? How would Potter look at this? Would some of her methods, the Shaped Imbuing, perhaps, help?

What would it be like to collaborate with someone on a potion like this?

 _Sentimentality._ He blames the potion.

* * *

The Gala is at the Parkinson Estate this year. The Parkinsons are not a family that his is particularly well-acquainted with – while Lord Parkinson stood high in Lord Riddle's favour, he is a stern academic, and his crowd is not one in which his idiot mother acquits herself well. His mother isclever, in all her madness, but she is not academic.

He looks around subtly, curiously. The Parkinson Estate is far more glamorous, warm, than the Lestrange Manor. The Lestrange Manor was decorated in shades of iron, gray, soot, with splashes of blood. There is no gold, no gilt adorning the silver and iron picture frames lining their corridors. They had no grand ballroom, such things being considered frivolous by the eternally frowning Lestrange forebears, and it was a good thing, too, because such a room would require hundreds of Galleons per year in upkeep.

The Lestranges are late, courtesy of his mother. They are not even fashionably late – his mother was _displeased_ with how her family had dressed, that evening, and forced both him and his father to change several times to match her, as though they are mere decorations to her beauty. They are, as a result, simply… late. "Lord Rodolphus Lestrange, Lady Bellatrix Lestrange. Master Caelum Lestrange." The herald introduces them, and he bows to the correct degree to the hosts, ignores the banal pleasantries that his parents exchange in favour of examining the blond princess on Lady Parkinson's left side, dressed in forest-green and filigreed gold.

Miss Pansy Parkinson examines him, in return, her sharp blue eyes lingering pointedly on the shadows under his eyes, on the two inches between the floor and the end of his ice-blue robes. They bring out the colour in his eyes, bleach his skin, make his coal hair stand out, and his mother likes the effect – for all that he's outgrown these robes. He gives Parkinson a slight, shark's smile, a small mocking bow, and she simply smiles.

"Caelum, run along," his mother's dulcet tones chide. She and his father are moving slowly towards the throng by Lord Riddle. "I'm sure you will be more … interested in the things the other children are discussing."

Caelum holds his temper, smiles in return. As if he is the child that his mother thinks he is, instead of an adult of seventeen and the Heir to House Lestrange. As if he isn't one day going to run House Lestrange into the dirt with hate and pleasure. "Of course, Mother," he murmurs instead.

"Masters Bole and Pucey, Draco Malfoy, and some others are over there," Miss Parkinson gestures subtly with a tilt of her head. "I am sure I will see you there, anon."

He nods, wanders off in the direction that she suggests, swiping a glass of elf wine while he is at it.

They don't like him. He joins their circle, with all the audacity of the falsely oblivious, acts like he _belongs_. But he doesn't, and they all know. Bole and Pucey exchange a glance. Malfoy pointedly ignores him. He picks out Bulstrode – she takes after her father – a thin, sandy-haired boy he thinks may be a Nott, and Blaise Zabini. Zabini's nostrils flare at his scent ( _rosewood, passionflower, lavender_ ) but nothing flashes across his face. He doesn't like this, and they all know that the feeling is mutual.

"Bole. Pucey," he nods, and his lip curls as he sees another, black-haired, gray-eyed youth join them, pushing in between Malfoy and Bulstrode. " _Black_."

"Lestrange." Black acknowledges him, a glint of recognition in his eyes. They are familiar to him, and he's almost shocked to recognize something like Potter in them. A harder Potter, a critical one. They do look shockingly similar.

"What are you doing here?"

Black quirks up a smile at him. "I was invited," he says. " _Personally_ , I might add."

"Doesn't answer my question, Black. I asked why you were _here_."

Black spread his hands in a helpless gesture, but Caelum can read deliberate obtuseness in his eyes. He has no intention of answering – he doesn't even believe he needs to answer further.

"As I said, Lestrange, I was invited."

Caelum snorts in disgusts, taking a sip of his wine. "This is exactly what I mean," he complains. "which is why I cannot fathom the level of sheer nerve you managed to summon in trespassing for a second year running where no one wants a –"

"Oh, do shut up, Lestrange, no one is listening." A new, familiar voice cuts in. Its owner cuts in between him and Black. Her green eyes, familiar, aren't cold – they're laughing already.

Potter. Standing side by side, they look less similar, but maybe it's the hair. She's grown hers out, he sees – it's now just past shoulder length, in tame ringlets that could not be natural. His mother's ringlets, too, aren't natural, but somehow the same curls, the same shade, look so much warmer on her.

It's the eyes. It must be.

"You." He sneers at her. "What has the world come to, that they allow mongrels to roam in hallowed halls?"

She grins at him, her smile perfectly saccharine, perfectly fake. He recognizes it, almost returns it, but he is in _public_ and good god, his _mother_ is here. "I missed you too, _Caelum_. How is your final year shaping up?"

"Don't talk to me like we're friends," he hisses, a quick glance to the side to confirm that his mother is, yes, still pushing her way through the throngs of people around Lord Riddle.

"But we are," she blinks innocently at him, large emerald eyes mocking. "You told me your favourite colour and everything."

"I _did not_."

"Then how do I know it's dark blue?"

"It _isn't_ ," he growls insistently, but as he hears the snickers around him, he realizes he's lost this round. He takes a deep breath. "Still up to your usual nonsense, Potter? How plebeian."

She grins at him, a more genuine smile instead of sweet innocence, and sweeps him a mocking bow.

"How do you two… ah, know each other?" Bole asks, uncertain. Caelum looks over – the expressions on the others' faces vary from astonishment to open curiosity. He smirks.

"We happened to intern at roughly the same time at the Potion Guild this summer. I got in on merit, of course, and she…" he waves his hand airily. "Well, I suppose she fulfilled the novelty quota."

Her mouth, with its full lower lip, moues thoughtfully as she nods. "You're right," she agrees. "It probably was novel for the Guild to have an intern with _real talent_ for a change."

He narrows his eyes at her. "Talent is about dedication," he spits condescendingly. "Any two-year-old can throw things into a cauldron and call it a new discovery. If you had _any_ sense of what being a true potion-maker was about, you would build on the tradition before you, not blow it to smithereens with your wild half-blood ideas."

She sighs dramatically. "Maybe you're right. I guess only purebloods can have good ideas." She turns to her cousin, Black, and he feels a sudden thrill of foreboding.

"Rigel, would you mind telling Master Snape that Caelum Lestrange – that C-A-E-L-U-M – thinks he ought to keep his wild half-blood ideas to himself, for the good of potions-brewers everywhere?"

Black returns her smirk with one of his own, and it is there that he sees the similarity between the two. They look like siblings, not distant cousins. "I'd be happy to pass along the message. Have a card you'd like to include with the note, Lestrange?"

Caelum glares at her, wordless in his rage, but before he can respond, he sees his mother look up, raking the crowd for him. It is high time he found a secluded balcony to haunt for the rest of the night, preferably with a glass of wine or two to nurse, and he stalks off.

* * *

The good thing is that Bellatrix never catches word of any of Caelum's activities at the Gala. He spends the night avoiding her, avoiding them – he finds a secluded, third-floor balcony with ease and spends the night studying Potter from afar.

What can he say? She is probably the most interesting person on the floor. She has audacity – a halfblood, showing up at the Gala! Caelum is equal parts disgusted and fascinated.

She dances a set with Parkinson. Parkinson, out of kindness, lets her lead. He sneers slightly; he has barely met the girl, but all rumours said that she was soft-hearted, weak, just like her mother. It's the most popular set, too.

After the set is done, Potter most ineptly leads Parkinson back to her parents, congregated in a crowd near Lord Riddle. He spots his own parents there, too, which is all the more reason for him to stay in the shadows where he is, and he lets his attention drift across the dance floor. More than half of the Gala attendees are drunk, by now. He smirks – if there was one thing to be said, at Durmstrang he had learned to hold his own in drinking. Most of the attendees wouldn't have had more than a few glasses of elf wine over the past few hours. Idly, he amuses himself by counting them.

A sharp cry and a cut in the music, and his attention is immediately diverted back to the front of the room. He stands up, stares. From his vantage point above the crowd, he spots easily the cause of the commotion, as one of the Wizengamot elders – Tiberius Ogden? – has collapsed. He sees blood.

No one answers the call for a Healer. Caelum doubts it is because none are present. He thinks it more likely that most of them are simply drunk. He knows basic Healing, enough to manage his own cuts and bruises and minor curses, thanks to his mother, but it doesn't occur to him to step forward. His first aid skills are only that, and since it doesn't look like Bellatrix is in the room, he doubts anyone has thrown a torture curse at Elder Ogden. And in any case, there she is again; Potter steps forward, wand in hand, and with the assistance of her cousin, saves the day.

He smiles, a small, genuine smile of satisfaction that would have turned into a one-sided smirk if anyone had seen it. Potter really is the most interesting person on the floor.

* * *

 _Test # 4_ , he writes. Only four tests conducted throughout the winter holiday, and Caelum doesn't know whether that's a good thing or not. His body, and the animal part of his brain, think that is certainly a good thing, and that an even better thing would have been no tests at all, but his body and that part of his brain are soft and weak, and the hard part, the logical part, the _academic_ part is wailing at him that four data points are _not enough data points_ to establish whether there has been any improvement or what else needs to change about the potion.

Doesn't matter, he scolds himself firmly, forcing himself to look impersonally at the data points themselves. Twice, Cruciatus had not been held long enough for there to really be a difference - one session, ten minutes. Did he feel more stable, mentally, afterwards? Yes. Could he rule out placebo effect? No.

The other two times were more intriguing. He thinks there was a marked difference after two rounds – after the third, he didn't think the difference could be explained simply by placebo effect. Quite aside from being _calmer_ , he hadn't shaken to the same degree as usual, and he hadn't needed the Calming Potion when he was brewing the Draught of Peace. More than that, after only two rounds, he didn't think he truly _needed_ the Draught of Peace, but he had taken it anyway. Cruciatus sometimes left unseen side effects.

 _More tests needed,_ he writes reluctantly. More time, more experimentation, more tests.

The Potion he was seeking could be done. It just _hadn't_ been done because a potion to prevent insanity during the Cruciatus was only useful for someone who expected to be tortured on a regular basis. He can feel it.

* * *

Six months of tinkering later, six long months and a hundred and eighty cauldrons and twenty-four new ingredient combinations and preparations, and he still hasn't found the right formula. They don't feel right, his combinations, when he feels for them through the conscious imbuing link. They don't feel right, but they feel an odd sort of wrong – not an incomplete wrong, not an unstable wrong. They feel complete, both in ingredients and in magic – but they feel like they are missing _something_. They feel like a healing potion, and a protective potion, but they don't feel like either, and they feel wrong. And when he ignores it, when it takes them, they still make him feel high as a kite, which is not an advantage when dealing with Bellatrix Lestrange.

He hands in his winter prototype for his Potions independent study, calling it simply a variant of the Draught of Peace, and graduates from Durmstrang without fanfare. He Floos home, the taste of his variant potion on his tongue, takes his usual punishment with little complaint. It is just the routine, now, and the variant is better than nothing.

It is only in his lab, later that night, seeking to be distracted from the waves of pain still cresting his bones, that he rereads Potter's internship article and wonders if her technique, as esoteric as it is, might be the answer.

He thinks about writing her about it, but decides against it. She's a halfblood – interesting, esoteric ideas or not, and no one that he, as a pureblood, as the Lestrange Heir, should _really_ be in contact with.

But not two weeks later, his resolve is broken. He is meeting with Master Whittaker that morning, a short meeting to discuss the plans for their research trip in Chile. Caelum can't say that the content of the trip itself is squarely within his research interests, but new ingredients are always an excellent resource, and for all he knows the perfect ingredient is there, in South America, to make his potion complete.

The discussion is short, expected – the date they will leave, the tasks Caelum should expect, the ingredients they are seeking – until the end, when Potter's name comes up.

"One final thing, Lestrange – have you heard at all from Miss Potter since last year's internship?"

Caelum suppresses his start, doesn't let the surprise rise to his face. His voice is bored as he replies. "No, sir. She was much younger than I."

Master Whittaker sighed, nodding. "Of course, I remember. I was only curious - I saw her last week at the Guild meeting with Master Snape, and wondered what they were meeting about."

"My apologies, sir," Caelum replies, being careful to inject a tone of rueful regret into his voice. He rises. "If that is all?"

"Yes, Lestrange. Meet me here in three weeks, noon sharp, and we'll go to Chile."

Caelum writes Potter a furious stream of letters that afternoon and finds himself compelled into accepting lunch. At least, he manages to control the location and timing – La Serene, after the lunch hour. He knows the staff there well enough to ensure that they are given a secluded booth, and knows that they will keep their silence about who he meets. And, at least, she is paying.

* * *

He arrives at La Serene twenty minutes early to prepare.

Potter might have gotten one over him by getting him to lunch in the first place, but he will make sure she regrets it. _Especially_ her offer to pay.

He asks the staff for a secluded table, far from prying eyes, and they are only too happy to accommodate. His parents do, after all, eat here embarrassingly often, tipping well. He wonders, as he has many times, whether their extravagant lifestyle is only a cover for the fact that his family's businesses are not, in fact, doing particularly well – the Zabini fortune, though they manage not half as many businesses, is greater, let alone the wealth of families like the Malfoys or the Parkinsons. Even the Rosiers were wealthier than his, now, but his parents make it a point of pride not to let their somewhat lesser wealth show. They might be eating into the Lestrange family capital now, but it only took one successful gamble for it to pay off.

Caelum, of course, doesn't care. If they left anything for him, he would burn it to the ground.

He orders a bottle of their most expensive fairy wine. It's a vintage from a year that he knows was supposed to have been very good, and the prices match. It's not as though he can tell the difference, but then again, he won't actually be drinking it. A localized vanishing spell, a trick he made great use of at Durmstrang, would do. And if he is drinking, then Potter will likely be drinking, and considering how close-lipped she had been about her methodology (he had read the report – it just didn't make any sense), he could use every advantage in prying it out of her.

She arrives at one sharp, and Caelum is pleased to see that she's dressed for the occasion. The robes are a little looser than current fashion, but the pale green is suited to her colouring and brings out similar shades in her eyes. If her hair were longer, falling past her shoulders or to her waist, she might even have looked pure. He dismisses the thoughts, though – no pureblood heiress would be caught dead wearing the fashion from three years ago.

She immediately spots the bottle of fairy wine he has ordered, and raises an eyebrow. "I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to pay for alcohol until I'm of age, even if it's for you to drink."

"Don't be such a sour sugar quill," Caelum rolls his eyes at her. La Serene has let him drink there since he was twelve. Of course, by then, he had already experienced his first few forays into inebriation at Durmstrang. He hands her the menu. It's in French. They have an English-language menu, but he's specifically opted for the French ones. Multilingualism is so rare in English wizarding society. "Here, look it over. I've been here so many times I have it memorized."

Potter opens the menu, and Caelum notices her eyes widening in surprise. Mission to unbalance her? Success.

"I can order for you, if you like," he says, making sure to infuse it with just the right amount of mocking condescension.

"That won't be necessary," she assures him. She refuses the wine, when Andre offers – unfortunate, but at least she would be paying for it – and orders for herself. In French.

She catches his discombobulated look, which he was too slow to hide, and a dangerously mischievous light dances in green eyes. She says something else to Andre, and he responds in the same language, but for the life of him he can't work it out. Something to do with the wine, perhaps? He isn't sure. Wasn't " _du vin"_ wine? He saw it often enough on the menu, but the language is just too far apart from English, from Russian, for easy mutual intelligibility. He scowls at her.

"Since when do you speak French?"

"A house-elf taught me."

The Potters didn't have house-elves – it was a known fact that they made the Lady Potter uncomfortable. Something about slavery, though why Lord Potter had acquiesced to her demand to let them go, he had no idea. Then again, Lord Potter was foolish enough to marry a Mudblood, so there that was. The Blacks, perhaps?

"Get real, Potter. What were you saying to Andre?"

She blinks at him innocently. He doesn't need to know the chit very well to know that it's fake, a sign of trouble if there was one. "I told him it was your birthday. I asked if he could bring a cake with fourteen candles and he said he could get the wait staff to sing for you as well."

Caelum splutters, and if it wasn't for the fact that he had the localized vanishing charm working on his tongue, he would have spit out the wine that he's just unwisely sipped. Fortunately, she doesn't notice. Based on the innocent look on her face, she could have just lied. Or, based on the same, she could absolutely be telling the truth.

"Fourteen?! That's not funny. You'd better not have."

She grins at him. "What would you do if I did? You can't get up and storm out – that is, if you want to be welcomed back to this establishment. By how quickly you ordered your fish, I'm guessing you like this place a lot."

It's not so much as he _likes_ the place as it is that it is the most expensive place in Diagon Alley, and it is because it is the most expensive place that the Lestranges eat here. "Well, I'm not going to sit here and be humiliated," he snaps.

"Aren't you, though?" She smirks, and Caelum realizes, to his relief, that she was lying all along. He _knew_ they had been talking about the wine.

"You didn't order a cake," he confirms.

"Of course I didn't." She has the audacity to laugh at him. At Durmstrang, that would have been a recipe for a severe case of potions-induced bedbug bites, but Caelum doesn't have access to her bed. "You're so naïve sometimes, Caelum."

Since when were they on first-name terms? "I'm naïve? You're _ridiculous_."

"I'm _fun_ ," she corrects him, the smile on her face now genuine. "Maybe you've heard of it."

Is that what this was? Certainly, he always thought Potter was _entertaining_ , and _interesting_ , and he didn't even mind, that much, eating lunch with her. Had she been a pureblood, a proper Dark pureblood heiress, he thinks he even would have sought this out, maybe even courted her if her pedigree was right. What pedigree would his parents have accepted, for him, if they cared? Certainly a Dark pureblood from the Sacred Twenty-Eight, if they could get it, but he doesn't think anyone from that most prestigious list of Families has an appropriately-aged daughter. He thinks the Greengrass family has a couple daughters, and there's the Davis family, but the Davis family is barely middle-class and practically paupers.

He doesn't plan on courting anyone, anyway. The House of Lestrange can die with him, for all he cares.

"Why did I agree to this, again?" he complains finally, slumping in his seat and taking a long, dramatic, sip of wine.

"Free food?" she suggests. "Free information?"

He sighs, a gusty sigh that he combines with a sniff. As if he could have forgotten. "Oh, that's right. Spill your guts, then. What's going on with your research? And don't give me some vague shit about experimentation or exploring your options. I want to know what Master Snape is doing with your work."

"He wrote and asked for a demonstration of the technique, to make sure he was replicating it correctly," she says, taking a drink from her glass of water.

Caelum's eyebrows shoot up. As far as his godfather has mentioned and as far as he has heard, they have not managed to replicate the results at the Department of Mysteries. Apparently, the notes that Caelum sent were just replicas of the notes that Harry – Potter, he corrects himself mentally – had already sent them. "He's managed to replicate them? No one else has."

Now Potter looks surprised. "And where did you hear that?"

"I have my sources," he replies dismissively, ignoring the new, intent stare she's giving him.

"Your godfather told you," she says a moment later in realization, and grins. A genuine grin of delight, satisfaction in having worked something out without his assistance. "Augustus Rookwood is an Unspeakable, right? They're still having trouble modifying my methods, aren't they?"

Caelum scowls at her. "How did you guess that? You know far too much for a halfblood." Even one that is heiress to a prominent noble family.

"I have my sources," she replies, mocking now.

He blows out a breath gustily. "Fine," he snaps. "Yes, my godfather asked me if I had any insight into the process, seeing as I interned with you at the Guild while you were inventing it. I told him it probably wasn't as complicated as it seemed – I mean, _you_ came up with it." The last comment was a potshot, and he knew it.

"That's just sad," she says, shaking her head in disappointment. Caelum doesn't see any mocking in it, though – it's genuine disappointment. "I gave them very detailed instructions. And samples. They're probably just sitting around complaining about how impossible the concept is instead of _trying_." She takes a sip of her water.

Caelum takes a sip of his wine, in return, and fills his cup to the brim again. "Potter, I hate to say this, seriously, I loathe myself for even thinking it, but your new technique is impossible. I don't know how you came up with it, or how Snape managed to replicate it, because it makes no fucking sense."

He had read her notes over several times after having received them, and he could make no heads or tails out of it. She had explained that it had to do with forming a spell without releasing it, then imbuing the uncasted, but complete, spell into the potion while brewing. It would make sense, in a theoretical sense, but there was no such thing as forming a spell without releasing it. A spell was made in its casting – any child knew that.

She only raised an eyebrow at him. "It's new, not impossible," she says patiently. "Of course it's difficult; it if were easy, then someone would have discovered it long before I did."

"Because you're the next coming of Merlin." Caelum scowls into his glass of wine.

Potter shrugs. "I just have good control over my magic. That's all the technique requires; exceptionally good control."

"Not hard to control a half-dead pixie," Caelum replies snidely. He knows it's cruel – better yet, he knows that this is one of the things she talked about last year, where he simply says mean things for the sake of being mean. He knows that it's probably not even true – she never seemed to have any trouble casting high level spells or brewing difficult potions in their internship, and at the Gala he watched her cast enough healing spells that it would have exhausted many of his classmates at Durmstrang.

"You're right," she says, sarcastic. "I guess the Unspeakables have so much magic they can't exercise the necessary control over it. I wonder how Snape managed to make it work? Do you think he is a Squib, too?"

"Snape's a genius. The fact that he even got your stupid halfblood idea to work is a reflection on him, not you or your technique."

It doesn't escape him that Snape is a halfblood, for all he is a genius, and that all the evidence pointed to Potter being the same. They finish the meal with the expected amount of bickering – Potter picks up his trick with the fairy wine, but since she didn't drink, it didn't unbalance her, either. She picks up the tab, flinching at the number but paying it anyway, even though he, in a moment of weakness, offers to have the bill put on his parents' tab. They wouldn't have noticed, but if she paid, then there was nearly no way they would find out about this clandestine meeting. So he doesn't argue.

He picks up a promise from her to teach her how to Shaped Imbue.

* * *

They aren't able to find a time to meet for him to learn Shaped Imbuing before his trip to Chile, which is thankfully short. It's not Caelum's first time abroad – he went to school in Durmstrang, after all – but it's his first experience living and working away from civilization. They stay in tents, the whole trip there, locating and studying magical ingredients by day and experimenting with the ingredients at night, by the light of their wands.

He doesn't complain. He knows Master Whittaker is pleasantly surprised by his attitude, but as close as the man might be, socially, to his family, Master Whittaker has never really _known_ him, nor his parents. They run in similar circles, and Master Whittaker is a member of the SOW Party; but that is where the similarities end, because Master Whittaker normally attends the academic events that Caelum knows Bellatrix avoids.

Master Whittaker doesn't know that, as uncomfortable as the tents can be, they are miles and away from the cold tension of Lestrange Manor. Caelum would pick sleeping in this tent over a night at Lestrange Manor any night. Still, his surprise works in his favour, and at the end of the four week trip, Caelum's apprenticeship papers and drawn up and signed, and he is formally apprenticed.

Somehow, in making good on her promise to teach him how to Shaped Imbue, he hadn't expected that promise to mean he would need to go to Potter Place. In retrospect, he didn't know what he _had_ expected – maybe they would meet at the Potions Guild? But he is not an apprentice at the Guild until September, when Potter is at school, and Potter simply isn't affiliated with the Guild in any formal way. Neither of them have the necessary privileges to book a lab at the Guild, and between the options of going to Potter Place, and having Potter come to Lestrange Manor … well, the safer route for all involved is simply for Caelum to go to Potter Place.

He doesn't bother telling his parents where he's going, but has to walk past his mother to use the Floo. Once his formal apprenticeship starts in September, he'll be moving out to the Guild apartments, the official line being that he is focusing on his studies, but for these next few weeks, just these next few weeks, he still needs to stay at Lestrange Manor.

Bellatrix in a bad mood – her meeting with Lord Riddle has been cancelled. Caelum doesn't know what the meeting was about, and he doesn't care, but when she is in a mood, she wants to start a fight.

"Where are you going?" she asks, sharp.

"Out," Caelum replies simply, walking straight to the Floo. "I'm late."

He hesitates a moment at the Floo. Really, it would be best for him if she leaves before he calls out the name of his destination. Better yet, it would be better if Potter had given him Apparition coordinates, but since the girl is too young to Apparate herself, he doubts she would know them. He considers waiting, but he really is running late, and he realizes that if he doesn't leave _now_ , his mother will think he lied, and then he'll be in for it either way. Since when was it that his life became a game of dodging torture?

He picks up a handful of Floo powder and casts it over the flames. "Potter Place!" he calls out, without looking back, and walks in. He's already whirling away as the vase comes flying at him, and thankfully only few shards are caught with his flame, but he simply resigns himself to catching hell later.

"…not some lost puppy you can bring home and house-train –"

" _Dad_." Caelum recognizes Potter – Harry's – voice, even as it is sharper than he's ever heard.

"Don't worry about it, Potter," he says, addressing the man, whom he recognizes as Auror Potter, the current Head of Magical Law Enforcement. Or was it just the Auror Office? He didn't care. "My mother had the same reaction when I told her where I was going. Only she threw a vase at me."

He realizes, suddenly, that he still has bits of porcelain caught in his dark hair, and sets about putting himself to rights. "Missed," he adds idly, and he sees Auror Potter deflate like an old balloon.

"Let's your mother know if we need an extra place at dinner," he mumbles to the Potter girl, shooting Caelum a dark, promising look. Caelum ignores it – if he can take his mother, he is sure he can take Auror Potter. Aurors aren't allowed to torture people.

Harry – Potter, he corrects himself mentally – sighs, and leads the way to her basement laboratory. "Believe it or not, it's not personal," she says. "My dad hates all boys regardless of surname."

Caelum is amused at the very thought, but he sniffs. She smells of warm earth, of potions-making. "As if I would lower myself to court the halfblood daughter of –"

She rolls her eyes. "Yes, yes, consider me insulted," she says dismissively, stalking into her lab and plopping herself down on a stool. She nudges another stool over to him, which he makes a show of wiping down before he sits down. "So you want to learn how to shaped imbue…."

"You're going to make this as difficult as possible for me, aren't you?" he complains.

"It's difficult enough on its own," she retorts. She hands him a book – the title is written in an old cursive that he can barely decipher. _A Treatise on the Wielding of Wandless Power_. "This is the book about wandless casting that made the most sense to me. You can read it at your leisure, but the main point the author gets at is the density required for successful wandless casting."

Caelum wrinkles his nose in distaste at the book. He can already tell that he is not going to enjoy it, and as an academic, that says a lot. It's an old book. "How old is this thing? Where did you find it, Borgin and Burke's?"

She snorts. "As if. You wouldn't find a gem like this in that bin of trash. And haven't you heard that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover?"

Privately, he agrees with her on that front. His parents use Borgin and Burke's to divest themselves of some particularly dark artifacts, and the place has an unsavoury reputation. He frowns then – how would she know? Surely she, the halfblood heiress of the Light family, didn't tread into the store. "How would you know what books they sell at Borgin and Burke's?"

Somehow, he doesn't like the thought of her, alone, in Knockturn Alley, and he stares at her, uncomfortable with his own thoughts. She shrugs.

"It's twenty feet into Knockturn Alley," she replies dismissively. "Not exactly off the beaten path."

He grimaces, but lets it go. He doesn't like the thought of it, but he doesn't know why, and he shouldn't care. He forces himself to drop it, to return to the point. "You really couldn't find any modern books on the subject? How do I know this information is even good?"

She lowers her eyes, dimming those startling green eyes. He likes them, he realizes with a start – green eyes, expressive, but scowls those thoughts away. "Were you even listening? I said this was the best book I've come across, and I've read quite a few. Most just go on about the importance of willpower without explaining exactly what the magic is doing differently when you cast without a wand."

He grimaces, but opens the book. Just as he feared, the language in the book is old – very old. He wishes it were in Russian. It would be so much easier for him to read in Russian, and mentally he makes a note to scour for a Russian text on the subject when he is next in St. Petersburg.

"This language is entirely antiquated. It's like reading a commentary on _Mordred's Book_ that was written contemporary to its original circulation."

"Don't worry, I can summarize it for you."

"No need," he interrupts, dropping the treatise onto the lab bench. "Half of this is about learning how to wandlessly channel magic. I already know how to do that – any halfwit with a decent Potions instructor can consciously imbue. Don't know how you managed it, considering that backwater hovel of a school you attend in the wilds of Americas, but still."

She rolls her eyes. "You never left the country, have you, Caelum?"

He is more offended than he should be, all things considered. Why should he care that she doesn't remember basic facts about him? She's a halfblood, a girl, a Potter – impure. She's a nobody, or if not a nobody, at least nobody he should care about. Why should he care at all what she thinks of him, if she thinks of him at all? But he _is_ offended, and there's something about her that draws it out, and he doesn't want to think about _why_ he is so bothered by the fact that she can't remember the basic facts about him, that apparently she is not so fascinated by him as she is by her.

He's fascinated by her because she's a freak, he reminds himself. She's a halfblood, but she's smart, and that's so unusual that it's interesting. He is _not_ offended that, apparently, she doesn't think the same of him.

Instead, he scowls at her. "I attended school in _Durmstrang,_ " he reminds her. "And I just got back from an internship in Chile with Master Whittaker. Not to mention my family's businesses operate internationally and I've been paraded at grand openings and fundraising events for as long as I can remember. I bet I've been more places than you could ever _dream_ of going."

Maybe that was a bit much, he thinks, but it's true, and he wants her to _remember_ it.

She shrugs it off. "How funny that you should be the closed-minded one, then. Isn't travel supposed to make a person more tolerant and empathetic towards the unfamiliar?"

"Only if the traveler is a moonstruck ninny like you," he sneers thoughtlessly. "I bet you get all aflutter with romantic feelings when you read about foreign cultures and famous sites of interest in your dusty books. In the real world, strangers are not folksy locals just waiting to guide you through the most gilded parts of exotic new worlds. If they aren't cheating you or stealing from you, they're insulting you behind your back."

He should know. Seven years at Durmstrang, and while he had had _some_ polite conversations with his schoolmates, he didn't have _friends_. Lestranges didn't have friends.

Her look is entirely mocking. "Oh, Lestrange, were you terribly disillusioned when you met your first stranger? Was it ever so shocking when the other kids at Durmstrang didn't fall down at your feet and beg for your attention?"

"Shut. Up." He replies, sharp. He can tell immediately that she knows she's hit close to the truth, and he even thinks he sees a hint of sympathy in those green eyes. He doesn't want that pity – fine, while he might have expected a friendlier reception from his Durmstrang schoolmates as a soft eleven-year-old, it was more than that. It was the new language, a new culture – it was learning how to fit in or pretend to in a place that would never truly accept him. For all the comments he heard whispered about him while he was at Durmstrang, so many of it was based on his own, cultivated image, so much was based on his _parents'_ stupidity in sending him to the damn school in the first place. It wasn't so simple – there was Poliakoff, and later even without friends, his classmates were polite to him. He even thought there were girls who may have liked him, not that he ever had time. Cultures were complex – just as British wizards insulted the Russians behind their backs, so the Russians did too.

It had nothing to do with being foreign, with travel – it was just _humanity_.

But he doesn't want to explain this to her, doesn't want to talk about how, actually, he thought he might know a thing about being foreign and about living in other cultures, and changes the topic.

"What is this nonsense about the spatial density of magic anyway? I've never heard of such a thing."

She leans forward eagerly, happy to follow his change of topic and abandon their previous insults. "That's the information most texts leave out. See, wandless magic is an entirely different method of using magic without using the wand as a channel. It's as if your wand is a garden hose, and the water is magic. Without the hose, it just pours out of the faucet, powerful but directionless. Wandless magic means your magic has to act as both the water and the hose, if you want to get anything done. That means a lot _more_ magic is required to perform a spell without a wand."

"Not to mention more control," he muses, thinking, forgetting momentarily about insults, about blood purity, about life. Research, potions have always done this for him – given him a space to _be_. "I have to compress the magic until it holds the shape a wand's movements would normally provide. How do you make magic more dense, though? Oh, of course – I see now. The water faucet – you just turn it to full blast, right?"

"I don't think –"

Without waiting for her reply, he holds out his hand and casts the Fortis shield. It bursts into being, and he feels a momentary rush of success, but it keeps growing, expanding bigger and brighter. Frantically, he reaches for his magic to stop it, to shape it properly, but it slips from his control and explodes with a bang.

He flinches, ready to throw himself backwards, but realizes that Harry has thrown a shield up to protect them.

"Remember that thing about control," she says dryly, dropping the shield with a casual flick of her fingers.

He stares at her speculatively. Judging from what he knew of his own power levels, and the ease that she cast the wandless spell he had just done, Potter is hiding even more magic than he had suspected earlier. He is no slouch on the power spectrum – not _Lord-level_ , but a Master, certainly. "Control. Sure. So were those reflexes something you picked up along with shaped imbuing, or were you deeply traumatized at some point?"

She wrinkles her nose at him, perfectly poised. "Wouldn't you like to know? But maybe try a Bubble-Making Charm the next time you think you've discovered the secret to wandless magic within five minutes of cracking the book open."

Caelum shrugs disagreeably. He would never admit being wrong to a pureblood, let alone a halfblood. And like that, the magic of the moment is gone. "I have you here to protect us though, don't I?"

"Perhaps next time I'll just stick to defending our vital organs and leave your pretty face to its fate."

"So much petty jealousy." He tsks, with false disapproval. He is pretty, and he ignores the flattered feeling he gets that Harry thinks so. That is just fact. "You could have a face like mine too, if you stopped wasting your gold on potions ingredients and put it towards procedures that would actually do you good."

He examines her closely, critically. It occurs to him that he had never had the opportunity to do so before, not so closely, anyway. She was always snapping at him. But now that he thought about it, it looked as though she had strongly favoured the Potter bloodline, based on the number of pureblood traits he picked up. In fact, the only differences between her and a pureblood heiress were her shoulders, which were broader than a pureblood witch's ought to be, and her sharp jawline, almost masculine in its cast. And of course, no pureblood witch would have allowed her eyebrows to grow unchecked. "I know a witch with a gift for permanent transfigurations who could slim down your shoulders and take some of the sharpness out of your jawline. Probably even fix those eyebrows for free as a public service."

She simpers at him, mocking. "Is that who you used, Lestrange? I'm surprised you recommend her services, considering…"

She gives him a dismissive once-over, and even knowing that she is baiting him, he bristles. "I'm being serious, Potter. She'd give you a discount if you mentioned I referred you."

She blinks, her surprise shining in those green eyes. There is a pregnant pause.

"Thanks, but I'll wait a few years before I resort to such drastic measures. Who knows? Maybe I'll grow into my looks."

Another long pause. He stares at her, considering how to phrase it. How could Lord Potter, Auror Potter, not have discussed this with her? She was quickly approaching the age where pureblood heiresses made their matches, and he didn't _want_ to be cruel to her, and that was enough of a surprise in and of itself. Still, he had to say something.

"It'll be too late by then, you ninny," he sighs finally, taking it on directly. Despite his words, there's no heat in his voice. "At your age, prospective matches have already begun looking, and given the legislative wheels in motion, you should be very concerned with the heads you turn – or those you don't, rather. You don't want to be left with no options when the marriage law gets pushed through."

She considers him thoughtfully, though Caelum can tell that she won't be taking his advice. He has an odd feeling, in his stomach, then – what if she had no offers? What if this brilliant, genius, halfblood potioneer was locked out of Society because of something she couldn't control? And yet, somehow the opposite thought is equally annoying – he doesn't want to consider Harriett Potter, Heiress Potter, brilliant potioneer and powerful witch, yoked with just any pureblood whose head she turned.

He pointedly ignores the whisper that suggests, ever so delicately, that he could make her an offer himself. She deserves better than that. She deserves better than _all_ of that.

She coughs, clears her throat. "I'll take it under advisement," she says diplomatically. "Try wandless casting again, only this time hold the spell inside you as long as possible before letting the magic manifest."

He sighs, in return, and goes back to it. By the end of the session, he thinks he's getting better at it, but he still can't hold the spell internally long enough to even think about imbuing it in anything.

* * *

Caelum throws back a vial of his modified Strengthening Solution as he steps into the green flames. He knows that both Potter, the girl, and Auror Potter have seen him, but he doesn't care. It's none of their business, what potion he's taking, and he would be very surprised if his mother were not waiting for him on the other side, wand at the ready. He knows her.

"Mother," he gets out, coldly, light-headed from the Potion, before he's struck with the first Cruciatus.

This should just be old hat to him, at this point, he thinks cynically, as he gives himself over to the screaming. Under torture, he has learned always to scream, always to let his body flop and do what it will, to give himself over and _accept_ the pain. The risk with Cruciatus is insanity, and by _accepting_ the pain, by screaming it out as loudly and as much as necessary, he would protect, to some degree, his sanity. This is step one of surviving torture – abandoning any pretense of dignity, for the greater goal of _survival_.

But the curse still burns, still sets his bones, his tendons and his joints on fire, still cuts a flaming whip a thousand and one lashes over his body, and he's on the ground wailing for what seems like hours but which he knows is only minutes. Eleven minutes, to be precise, when the bitch finally lifts the curse.

"Never call me that, mongrel," she whispers, stormy gray eyes utterly mad. "What were you doing at Potter Place?"

He wheezes out a single huff of a laugh. _One_. He's not getting out of this without at least four rounds, so he may as well say whatever he wants to say. He's in trouble, deeper trouble than he's ever been in, and between that and the potion, he's losing it.

"Making potions," he coughs, smirking. She'll think that _potions_ meant _sex_ , because she's a complete and utter idiot and he now realizes it doesn't matter what he says – it never did. She thinks whatever the fuck she wants to think, and that is that.

" _Crucio,"_ she says, again, and Caelum gives himself over to the pain.

The first one always feels like fire, and the second like cold steel, running over his panicked nerve endings like ice. He feels daggers in each of his joints, severing his tendons, feels his body curling in on itself and feels his shame leaking from his bladder. He always wets himself during the second Cruciatus, and he knows Bellatrix hates it. She thinks its weakness, his weakness, but Caelum knows it's not that. Under torture, the most important thing was saving the integrity of his mind, and he did not give a flying shit about the condition of body if he could save his mind. Physical injuries could be healed. He's freezing, he is so cold, but his body will not go numb, will not give him even that relief, and this time it's a good minute before he realizes that the curse has been lifted because he is shaking so badly. Eleven minutes.

"Once more, Caelum. What were you doing at Potter Place?"

"Making potions," he repeats, again, wheezing madly. He feels a giggle come up his throat, and he lets it out, and it's an insane giggle but he knows that the fact he can _tell_ that it is an insane giggle means that his mind is still intact. He will not say anything different.

He feels his magic, a warm blanket, rise in his gut, soothing, a balm that doesn't make things better when the third Cruciatus hits.

The third Cruciatus is drowning. He's cold, still, cold all over, but instead of steel and daggers, he's going over a waterfall, a cold, icy, waterfall, and he's drowning, heavy, brute force waves slamming into his body, over and over and over again. He feels his bones shatter over the rocks below, feels himself struggling to reach the surface but he can't, he never can. He can't even muster the ability to scream, anymore, and he knows that his silence is unsettling. He wants to die, the third time, and unlike other times he knows the she won't stop at three. He wants to die, but he won't go mad, he won't go mad, he won't go mad.

When round three ends, this time, after a record twelve minutes, he vomits over the clean, pretty, marble flooring of the Lestrange formal dining hall. He hasn't eaten in hours, and he's surprised that there is anything at all, or maybe he is surprised that he is not vomiting great buckets of foul water everywhere.

"Once more, Caelum." She whispers. "Why were you at Potter Place?"

"Making potions," he says again, equally softly. He still has his mind, he still has his magic. If he had the strength to reach his wand, he might even have the will to use it.

" _Crucio._ "

The fourth Cruciatus is ripping, shredding. No fire, no precise daggers, no cold water – only the sensation of ripping, tearing, shredding. He is being flayed, alive, his skin ripping off his muscles and revealing their soft tenderness beneath. He's screaming, again, he realizes belatedly, as his body stretches out and he feels claws raking up and down his limbs and the skin part from his abdomen and teeth ripping into his intestines. He feels his entrails spill out onto the cold, cold marble floors, splashes of red on white, and he's screaming again, breathlessly, hoarsely, as he is devoured.

It's all in his head, but when the curse is lifted he still feels like his organs are resting on the cold marble floors, blood on ivory, blood on stone and iron. He's staring up at the family crest now, _authoritas intra puritas,_ and he feels like the tower splayed out on the floor, a living, breathing, crest burned into the floor of the Lestrange formal dining hall. Twelve minutes. Twelve fucking minutes of the fourth Cruciatus, and despite the shaking, despite the pain, he feels a thrum of satisfaction because it is now undeniable – his potion is working. His potion _is working,_ even if it's not perfect, even if it could be better, it is _working_.

He's not mad. Yet.

"Again, Caelum."

"Making potions."

" _Crucio_."

The fifth Cruciatus is acid. It's burning, but it's cold, but it burns and his flesh is steaming off of him in plumes of foul-smelling sulphur. He is being vaporized, bit by bit, and he can feel every atom wrench itself away from his body, away from him. His screams are hoarse, and he is going mad. He feels like he is going mad, but he isn't, because madness would be freedom, and he is caged in a world of sour-tasting acid and pain, and if he knows this then he is not yet mad. If it weren't for his potion, he thinks he would be mad, and physically he has no control anymore. He's gripping onto his magic, normally so calm and placid, now frenetically active and panicked and wanting to do _something_ , _anything_ , with the barest hints of his control, almost all of which is focused on keeping him _sane_.

Fourteen minutes. She's pushing it, pushing the limits of his sanity, even with the benefit of his Potion, and Caelum fears that the fact that he is the Lestrange Heir will no longer be enough. He's never done this many rounds in a row, never this many at that length of time. He wishes he had had the time, earlier, to study Potter's technique more fully – he really thinks that his Potion can be improved with it, perhaps he could have pushed some Occlumency spells into the matrix of his potion to insulate his mind, and he regrets that he never got that chance. Maybe, too, he should have worked more on wandless magic – at least that would have given him some power, even away from his wand, to heal himself, soothe himself, defend himself.

"What were you doing at Potter Place?"

"Making… potions."

" _Crucio_."

It's too late for regrets, even if Caelum thinks he has some, and he's sorry that he'll never see his Mastery, but it is what it is, and he can't hold on much longer. He doesn't have the strength, and he lets go of all the things he is holding back – his sanity, his magic, his consciousness.

A blast of sound, of noise, and when he comes back to himself, sore all over but somehow still ( _blessedly, blessedly_ ) sane, he's still on the cold marble floors of the Lestrange formal dining hall, which looks as though a hurricane has run through it. He sits up, slowly – he tastes his own magic in the air, spies the dents in the walls around him, the chips of stone littering the floor everywhere except a small ring around him. He looks behind him, slowly, at the great fireplace, and sees only a mass of shattered rubble. He looks up, slowly, and sees that the great Lestrange crest has fallen to the ground and shattered.

He has a sudden, mad impulse to giggle, and he gives breath to it while checking himself over. He's shaking – badly, very badly, and he knows he needs the Draught of Peace to eliminate the shaking entirely. He's shaking too badly to brew right now, though, and he'll need a Calming Draught before he can get started on that. He lets out a deep sigh. It was easily the worst torture session he had ever experienced.

He looks within himself. He's still sane, obviously, though by all rights he shouldn't be. He runs though the facts quickly anyway: his name is Caelum Lestrange, he is seventeen years old, nearly eighteen now. He graduated from Durmstrang not two months ago, and he is an apprentice at the Potions Guild, or he will be in September. He is a Mastery-level wizard – powerful, even a little more powerful than his mother and father, but not Lord-level. He checks his core – it's there, humming ice as always, calm and cool and not in the least the winter storm it was earlier. It's also _dimmer_ than he would expect, even after an afternoon of attempting wandless casting.

Much dimmer.

He gets to his hands and knees, grimly. He doesn't think he has ever lost control of his magic in that way, not even as a child. Some children had bouts of accidental magic – he hadn't. Perhaps that was as it should be.

He doesn't think he can stand, but he doesn't think anyone is watching. He crawls to his potions bag and pulls out a Calming Draught, fumbles for the stopper twice, thrice before he pulls it out and manages to drink it down. Hell, one isn't enough – he pulls out a second one and does the same. He considers a third, but Calming Draughts were addictive in large quantities, and as much as he _wants_ another one, he needs his faculties about him to brew the Draught of Peace and fix his stupid nerve endings before they fray any more. He staggers up, looks around again, truly taking in the disaster he has made of the Lestrange formal dining hall.

To his pleasure, standing, he sees Bellatrix crumpled in a heap, unconscious, at the other end of the hall. He considers, a moment. He doesn't need to do this. What he needs, now, is his potions lab with all the ingredients necessary for a Draught of Peace. But it's so rare to see his mother unconscious in this way, and he pulls out his wand, considering. He doesn't need to do this.

But oh, he wants to, and he has the strength to, right now, when he is up and armed and she is unconscious. He stumbles over to her, points his wand down, belatedly remembering to kick hers away from her body.

" _Enervate_."

Stormy gray eyes open, the hate alive in them as they focus on him, and Caelum knows his eyes, ice-blue, show the same, shining, hate. He has his wand trained on her.

"I'm moving to the Potions Guild," he says softly, slowly, in an effort not to stutter over his words. "I'm moving to the Potions Guild, and the official line is that I am focusing on my studies. You will not contact me. I am the Lestrange Heir, and I will return to the Family for the Gala, for major events – but you will not contact me. I'm through with this."

She hisses at him, a silent promise in her mad gray eyes.

" _Crucio_."

Her screams are music.

* * *

He's out of Lestrange Manor in a day, and his bare Guild apartment is heaven. It's his, truly his, and while he wards his door with the strongest wards he knows how to perform, he feels, for the first time aside from Durmstrang, safe. She doesn't contact him, and he is satisfied.

He spends every day lost in the Potions Guild libraries or working with Master Whittaker. They spend long hours, every day, working on the new ingredients that they retrieved from Chile. They only brought back four, and none of them, he thinks, are of any use in his Strengthening Solution variant. Two turn out to have uses in transformative potions – one seems to amplify the power of a particular transformation, while the other seems to reduce effectiveness. These are the ones that Master Whittaker is most fascinated by, and they are the ones they spend the most time on. One is a colour-changing agent, and they don't think it has any other purpose – this is a paper that Caelum works on, since Master Whittaker, after early investigations come up empty, simply assigns him the task of further investigations and conclusions. The last one, a sort of tree bark, seems to have some healing properties for digestive illnesses.

Caelum focuses on examining ingredient preparations. It is somewhat similar to his internship research, and the background serves him well as he mashes, shreds, imbues, dries, and otherwise manhandles the ingredients as he pleases. It's interesting work, and for once in his life, Caelum even thinks he might be happy.

In his little spare time, he works on his wandless magic. He does make a trip to St. Petersburg in October, a trip sanctioned by the Guild to obtain particular ingredients easier to locate there, and he's sent because he speaks Russian, because he can get the best price haggling with the Russian apothecaries. He searches the bookstores there for tomes on wandless magic, picks up three, and after a read of each, decides grudgingly that Potter was right – her tome, dated as it is, is a better theoretical resource. Two of his books simply wax on about how useful wandless magic is, without really explaining how it is done, and the third, a thin one, contains only a single paragraph on the density of magic needed to cast a wandless spell.

No matter, though. Potter's summer explanation was more than adequate for him to work on, and so in his spare time he also attempts to recreate her results. He sticks to the Modified Weightless Draught, though, because it's a cheap brew, because Hover Charms are an easy, low-level spell, and because it's easy to test.

In early December, he's rewarded when it actually works, and he makes her controlled hover potion. He scrawls off a letter to her, vastly overstating his success, and is rewarded when she replies with the briefest of sarcastic notes reminding him that she _only_ gave him a complete set of directions and a private lesson for him to do it. It's even spelled to applaud when he opens it.

He smiles, a genuine, almost gentle smile, when he reads it.

* * *

It's the Christmas holidays before he even realizes, and he reluctantly returns to Lestrange Manor, wand in hand. Instead of Flooing, he Apparates outside the grounds, and lets himself in through a side door usually monitored by the house-elves.

He has never minded the house-elves. They are loyal to the Lestranges, and loyal to him, and while they might know about Bellatrix's madness, they don't comment, and they always kept him fed.

He doesn't bother announcing his presence – the elves will tell his parents that he is at home, in the snake's den, and why attract attention? He knows his mother will remember the torture curse he cast on her, and he knows that she'll be seeking vengeance. He wouldn't be here, if it weren't for his status as Lestrange Heir, but it is what it is. He is the Lestrange Heir, and even if his mother was utterly mad and likely to curse him the minute she saw him, well he wasn't the same Lestrange Heir as he was six months ago and he'll give as good as he gets. Behind closed doors, of course

He doesn't head towards his old bedroom. No sense in being where she expects him to be, and the elves will know where he's gone. He heads, instead, towards one of the older guest wings.

It is only because he is crossing the manor to the second guest wing that he hears her. She's in the third drawing room, talking to someone.

"… Yes, my lord," he hears Bellatrix's voice, simpering, and he feels his lip curls away from his teeth in distaste. It's the voice she has always used with Lord Riddle, but if Lord Riddle were here, certainly she would not be greeting him in the third drawing room.

"I certainly think that I can find a wider scope for your abilities than Lord Riddle can," he hears a voice hiss. The voice is wrong, high-pitched, keening. It hurts his ears, somehow. "My elder self has, I am afraid, gone badly astray. What this world needs is a revolution, and he was supposed to bring it. The fact he has not is… disappointing. That will change. But I need you, Bella, my sweet, to reach out to him, to watch him as you always have, to know what steps he will be taking. You can do that for me, can't you? It is only for a short time."

"Of course, my lord," his mother replies demurely. Demure? His mother?

The door is ajar, and Caelum stops for a moment. He can see her, kneeling on the floor, kneeling as he thinks he has only ever seen her do for Lord Riddle. He can't see who she is talking to – he is shadowed in a great armchair, and he feels a thrill of foreboding.

Something is wrong. His magic is _itching,_ and he decides it's time for him to move, quietly, to the primary guest wing.

Spying on Lord Riddle? His mother?

There's something wrong here, and he will find out what it is, because whatever it is, he can use whatever advantage he can get against Bellatrix Lestrange. But now is not the time, and he makes a note to search his mother's quarters sometime soon.

If his mother is spying on the most powerful wizard of their generation, surely there is some evidence of it, and surely it would be to his benefit to find it and use it.

* * *

The Gala this year is at Malfoy Manor.

The Lestranges are late, again, though this time Caelum has nothing to do with it. He is ready, waiting, perfectly coiffed in the robes of navy blue that he prefers. The darker colour draws a warmer glow from his pale skin, and he doesn't look as much like a ghost as he knows his mother prefers. The sleeves of this set of robes are tapered to his wrists, leaving his hands free, all the easier to reach for his wand – while he _can_ cast wandlessly now, the more powerful spells still slip from his control, and for now he's limited to Potter's trick potions – the Modified Weightless Draught, a colour-changing charm that he uses to add undertones of blue to his hair for the night, that sort of thing. He is waiting, twirling a wand in an air of nonchalance when his parents make their entrance into their formal dining hall.

"Caelum. How nice of you to join us," his mother drawls. They haven't spoken since he came home earlier in the week. She is wearing ruby red, tonight, a shade that emphasizes similar notes in her lips and her nails. His father, as always, complements her in robes of a deep burgundy that don't suit him in the least. He fights to keep his lip from curling in disgust – his father has always been the passive one, especially when confronted with the tornado that is Bellatrix Lestrange.

She looks like a blood-drinker, tonight, and the way her robes are cut, to emphasize her curves, make her look like a whore.

"Mother," he replies curtly. "We are late, as per usual."

His father ignores them, walks forward to grab a handful of the Floo powder, and throws it over the flames. "Malfoy Manor," he says, bored, and he is whirled away.

His mother grabs a handful of Floo powder herself. "If we weren't already late," she whispers.

He rolls his eyes, more sure of himself than he has ever been, even if his fingers are white from gripping his wand. "Come, mother. Let's go play pretend."

He grabs a fistful of Floo powder and walks through the flames before she can reply.

Malfoy Manor never ceases to be amazing, every time he sees it, which he has a number of times now. Quite aside from the Malfoys being his cousins, they are high in Lord Riddle's favour, and it has always been prudent to emphasize their connection. But what impresses him, every time, is that while Malfoy Manor is made of the same cold marble as the Lestrange Manor, it feels warm. Narcissa Malfoy, as light as Bellatrix is dark, welcomes them with a perfunctory kiss.

"Bella, my dear," she says, kissing her sister on each cheek carefully. "It has been too long. Welcome."

Caelum nearly smirks. Narcissa hates Bellatrix, and the feeling is quite mutual. Instead, he bows – fifteen degrees only, the standard degree to which unrelated nobility greeted each other. Formally, family members did not need to bow to each other; a nod or any other sign of affection was considered acceptable. But fuck that – Caelum is tired of the games, or maybe he's just tired of playing the way that his parents expect him to. Their families _aren't_ close, and a fifteen-degree bow is a symbol to all those watching that the families are not so close as they would have others believe. "Lord Malfoy, Lady Malfoy, Master Draco," he greets them in turn, choosing his words carefully.

Lord Malfoy's eyebrows are raised. "It _has_ been too long," he drawls finally, reaching for a handshake. "So long you've forgotten to call us cousins."

"Has it?" he retorts, though he takes Lord Malfoy's proffered hand. "I suppose it has."

The words are meaningless, open to interpretation.

"Lord Riddle is already within the hall, as I'm sure you are aware," Lady Malfoy adds, eyeing her sister's robes with the slightest hint of distaste. "I'm sure Draco can direct Caelum to his friends."

"Aldon, Edmund and Pansy are in the back corner," Draco adds reluctantly, though obediently. That means Black is with them, already, Caelum thinks, and Draco doesn't want a scene. He shouldn't worry. Caelum has no intention of greeting his supposed British colleagues. He doesn't belong, and he might be here, playing pretend, but he hates it, and he's through pretending that he belongs when he so patently doesn't.

There are only a handful of people likely to be here that he wants to see, and all of them are members of the Potions Guild.

But he nods curtly in understanding, and strides into the Malfoy Great Hall.

Perhaps, he realizes, if he had paid more attention to the politics, if he had listened more, he might have been prepared for the sheer number of people in the Hall. They aren't all purebloods, this year – while they have never been, the New Year's Gala being formally a fundraising event open to all, he is surprised this year by the sheer _number_ of Light and halfblood families in attendance. He spots Potter on the dance floor immediately. She's wearing dress robes of emerald green, ones that he can tell immediately emphasize her eyes, and her hair is grown out again to her shoulders. Her normally short unruly black curls are tamed into neat ribbons, and she's laughing as she dances with a tall, hazel-eyed man that he recognizes vaguely from Diagon Alley. Who was he, anyway? The mere fact that Caelum couldn't recognize him on sight meant that he was a halfblood or worse, but the fact that he was here, at the Gala, meant he came from a good family, if not a noble one. His robes, too, are a forest green, and they match.

That annoys him.

Potter finishes the set with him, and starts another. Caelum stalks off to one of the open balconies, where he can keep an eye on her all night. Surely the girl knows that she is supposed to be playing the field right now, right? The marriage law legislation has not yet passed, but it is only a matter of time – she should be looking at pureblooded options, not wasting time with another halfblood.

But she doesn't dance with anyone else throughout the night. He watches as she, smiling, begs off a third dance and takes a glass of water, it looks like, from one of the servers. She meanders over to Black's circle of friends, exchanges a few words with him that he can't hear but he thinks Black has danced a few polite sets with Bulstrode and Parkinson. The Malfoy boy joins them shortly, and it looks like he offers her a dance, but she declines, bowing ( _odd_ )apologetically. It's only a single dance or two before the hazel-eyed man retrieves her, and she nods to Black's friends and returns to the floor with him.

Third dance, then fourth. Doesn't she intend on dancing with _anyone_ else? It's entirely the wrong impression than the one she should be giving, and he's on the floor before the fifth can start, cutting his way across the floor to her.

"Excuse me," he says haughtily to the other man, who on closer inspection is quite muscled, and who, he realizes suddenly, has the exact same jawline as the Aldermaster. He places himself firmly between him and Potter. "I believe I have the next dance?"

Potter frowns at him. She has done something with her eyebrows and her eyelashes, tonight – they are darker, drawing more attention to those striking eyes.

"Lestrange," she greets him. "I don't think—"

He doesn't wait for her to finish her sentence before he sweeps her away into the next song – a Viennese waltz. She knows the steps, clearly, but she's not used to them, and makes several missteps that he, quite kindly, ignores.

"Who were you dancing with?" he demands quietly, too soft for the other dancers to hear over the music.

"None of your business," she retorts, her eyes narrowed.

"Let me guess, then. The Aldermaster's son?" he sneers.

"Why would you care if I were?" she snaps, testy. She thinks he's going to use to it attack her Potions pedigree, he realizes immediately, and she's defensive. He almost snorts – she published a major discovery eighteen months ago, and it is common knowledge at the Guild now that she's caught the attention of Master Snape. Her spot in the Guild is secured already, on her own merits, as much as he hates to admit. Her seeing the Aldermaster's son would be some cause for comment, but it's obvious from her reaction that she's already prepared to answer that. So, instead of attacking her in the way he _knows_ she is expecting, he takes a different tack.

"He's a halfblood," he says.

"So am I," she spits.

"But you're Heiress Potter," he says coldly, "And you can't ignore the legislation on the table."

"Who says I can't?"

He stares at her, a moment, while the music streams around them. "Your bloodline, your duties to your House, for one," he retorts when he finds his voice.

"I have a sister," she replies, short. She's angry at him, her eyes sparking. "Not that you should care at all about the fate of House Potter."

"I don't," he snaps, equally cold. "But seeing the _appropriate_ kind of person would improve your successes in the –"

"I don't need to improve my successes _anywhere_ ," she snarls quietly. "All I care about are potions, and if I can remind you, I published a major discovery a year ago and I'm collaborating _personally_ with Master Snape. I think I have my _successes_ well in hand, so I would thank you to _keep your sorry face out of it_."

There is a long, cold, silence, as they follow the prescribed steps – Caelum thoughtlessly, as the steps were ingrained in him as a child, and her carefully, keeping her eyes on her feet.

"Just giving you some advice," he says finally, into her ear, the next time they are close.

"Maybe you should refrain from that," she replies, but her voice has lost its heat.

As the final notes of the waltz clear the air, he feels himself firmly pushed aside. He turns, ready to snap, but it's not the Aldermaster's son – it's Black. He does spot the Aldermaster's son hovering nearby, though, clearly with the same idea.

"Sorry to intrude," Black says with a perfectly fake smile gracing his face, no light from the smile reaching his eyes. "But I need a dance with my _betrothed_ , now, thank you."

He whirls her away to the sounds of a foxtrot.

Caelum, turns, sees his surprise echoed in the stern frown on the Aldermaster's son's face.

" _Betrothed?_ " Caelum murmurs at the other boy.

"It can't be real," he mutters in reply, stalking off to the side and grabbing a glass of wine from a passing server. "It just can't be real."

To his surprise as much as anyone else's, Caelum follows him. "It would be better if it were," he says, similarly grabbing a second glass of wine.

The other boy huffs a laugh as he tosses back his wine in one shot. "You really think so? You're lying to yourself."

"Certainly a better choice than you, halfblood."

The other boy looks him over, carefully, his hazel eyes lingering on the aristocratic cast of his face. "Lestrange, isn't it? You're an apprentice at the Guild."

Caelum snorted. It's not like he should be hard to place at all – he _is_ a Lestrange, and he has every single genetic Lestrange trait there is. "And you're the Aldermaster's son."

"Lionel Hurst," the other boy says coolly. "Rivals should know each other's names, don't you think?"

"We're hardly rivals," Caelum snaps. Rivals in what? Trying to convince a certain Potter girl to do what was in her best interests?

"Keep lying to yourself, Lestrange."

* * *

It is, he thinks, a minor miracle that nothing more serious happens at the Gala. No assassination attempts, this year, and whether or not the engagement is real, it's apparent that Black talks some sense into Potter during his two dances with her. She dances a set with the Rosier boy, afterwards, and with Malfoy before she simply calls it quits and finds a secluded spot to sit. Hurst joins her, but she's clearly done with dancing, and the night ends without any fanfare. Better yet, he barely sees his mother all night, as she's apparently attached herself at the hip to Lord Riddle.

A person whom, he reminds himself, she is spying on and betraying.

This is why, early in the afternoon when Bellatrix is away plying her attentions on Lord Riddle, he is in her quarters, searching her parlour for any incriminating evidence. He should be searching the third drawing room, he thinks, but he dares not because he has no idea whether the mysterious Lord is still there or not. In a world of druthers, he would rather not find out – whoever it was, to command _his mother's_ attention, would have to be either incredibly powerful, incredibly sadistic, or both. Someone who could command his _mother_ to betray Lord Riddle, now, that person would need to be more powerful than Lord Riddle, or equally powerful and offer her something else in addition. And, judging from the snippet of conversation, he thinks he knows what that is.

His mother is a sadist, an expert torturer. Wider scope for her abilities meant wider use of her skill in torture – and Caelum has no intention of crossing paths with a sadistic Lord-level wizard.

It's not long before he hits paydirt. It's in her desk, slid into one of the top drawers – creased over and over again from the many times his mother has obviously taken it out to read, again and again and again. He only has three letters, but they are damning enough.

The latest one is from earlier this morning.

 _My dearest Bellatrix,_

 _Thank you for your most excellent information – I am sure that it cannot have been easy to convince Lord Riddle to divulge his plans to you._

 _While my elder self's plans do pose some difficulty, it also provides excellent opportunity – as I am sure a beautiful, intelligent flower like you will understand. Kindly continue to provide me with weekly updates of Lord Riddle's actions, and if you are able to quietly suggest to some of his colleagues that he is weakening, that the time has come to change allegiances to a new Dark Lord, more powerful than the one before – that, too, would not go amiss._

 _Yours,_

 _The Dark Lord_

Caelum lets out a derisive snort. The note is so transparent, it's disgusting. The other two are of the same vein – flattering, suggestive, designed to appeal to a woman so desperate for attention that she's willing to leave all sense behind. Well, it doesn't matter – for his purposes, they are sufficient. They show she is betraying Lord Riddle, and that is enough.

He takes the letters with him, leaves only the briefest of notes behind.

 _Mother,_

 _I've taken your most delightful and interesting letters. Call it my personal insurance policy._

 _Do not contact me._

 _Regards,_

 _Caelum Lestrange._

* * *

He is, as it happens, back in Chile with Master Whittaker in June when the news breaks. It has been five months – a little more than five months, really, since he has seen her. He's written her, twice, and her notes back are always short. He's almost got the control necessary to replicate the portable ward, and he thinks he would already be there if it weren't for the fact that his apprenticeship is ramping up, that this is his third research trip, and to be quite honest, playing with the new ingredients they are finding every day is simply more interesting than an esoteric technique that, at this point, he feels confident in saying he probably won't need anymore.

Bellatrix hasn't contacted him, and he likes it that way. He still has years of vengeance to take on her, but there is time for that later. For now, he is simply focusing on his Potions Mastery, and his revenge can wait.

It will be all the sweeter, anyway, for the waiting.

It is June the sixth, to be precise, and he is eating breakfast with Master Whittaker when the Daily Prophet is delivered, and Master Whittaker spits his coffee over the front cover, before slamming it on the low wooden table, open below the fold.

 _RISE OF THE DARK LORD_ , the headline screams.

Below the fold, _DECEPTION REVEALED_ , and a picture of a person that, despite having nearly no similarities to the person that Caelum has come to know, the person Caelum has, in some sense, come to _appreciate_ , Caelum recognizes instantly as Harriett Potter. She's lost a lot of the strictly pureblooded facial features he has always thought were inherited from her father – her jaw is rounder, her shoulder and hips a little curvier. Her hair is still short, still unruly, but he recognizes the stubborn tilt to her chin, the spark in her eyes. The picture isn't even in colour, but he feels the green strike at him just the same.

Caelum fights the urge to pull the paper away from Master Whittaker, and to distract himself, he pays the owl now standing, patiently waiting with its leg stuck out. Once the owl takes off, Caelum leans over Master Whittaker's shoulder to read.

It is rude to read over the shoulder of his Potions Master, but he thinks he can be forgiven in the circumstances.

The headline is direct.

 _Late on the night of June the fifth, Britain became home to a hitherto unknown self-described Dark Lord, calling himself Lord Voldemort. His intended victim, Rigel Black, now properly known as Harriett Potter (for details, see the below the fold), escaped, at great personal cost, to bring the news to the public._

 _It is as of yet not known how this new power will play in the politics of the region, but both Dark and Light political parties have issued press releases condemning his actions thus far. From Malfoy Manor in Wiltshire, Lord Riddle provided comments to his own political party and to the public, pressing, for the first time in decades, cooperation with the Light faction._

" _Based on his known actions thus far, in kidnapping a Hogwarts student to fuel his rise, this Lord Voldemort is an abomination against the rule of law in this nation. Regardless of politics, I encourage followers of both the Dark and Light to cooperate against this new threat. Without rule of law, we have nothing – without rule of law, we have no space to debate the future of wizarding society. First and foremost, we must protect the rule of law, that we and our future generations are able to debate politics in the future."_

 _From his seat at Hogwarts, Lord Dumbledore was more succinct. "We are at war," he stated._

 _We are awaiting comments from the self-described Lord Voldemort._

Below the fold, the picture of the person he _knows_ must be Harriett Potter. She is blinking, tired but defiant, into the camera, and occasionally she pushes her curls away from her face in annoyance.

 _In the scandal of the century, it has been revealed that a certain Rigel Black, Slytherin fourth-year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, has all along been Harriett Potter, half-blood and Heiress to House Potter. The deception was revealed late last night, as Miss Potter daringly escaped the self-described Lord Voldemort (for details, see above the fold) to return to Hogwarts to warn of his rise._

 _Multiple sources have confirmed that Harriett Potter matches the correct magical signature of Rigel Black, and it is believed that she has been attending Hogwarts in the guise of Rigel Black since her first year. Moreover, despite expressing shock, her own classmates were overheard stating, "It explains more than it doesn't."_

 _This reporter attempted to gain access Miss Potter for an interview, sequestered in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing, but was unsuccessful. By morning, Miss Potter had disappeared, much to the anger and frustration of staff._

 _It remains unclear what punishment Miss Potter will be facing for her flagrant contravention of Hogwarts' pureblood-only policy._

Caelum stares at the stark words on the page, puts his head down, and laughs himself sick.

* * *

Two days later, it is the _American Standard_ that carries news of the scandal, in the form of an exclusive interview by Arcturus Rigel Black, revealed to have been studying Healing under the guise of Harry Potter at the American Institute of Magic. The front page is dedicated to a full page photo of the youth, who looks nothing like the Black that Caelum is familiar with. This Rigel Black is taller, lean, and he has inherited his father's sharp facial features. This Rigel Black, Caelum realizes, will turn as many heads as Sirius Black allegedly once did.

He rips the paper open to the interview.

 _Arcturus Rigel Black is a regal, attractive youth, and he joined this reporter in a wizarding coffee shop near wizarding Charleston, South Carolina._

" _You will have to excuse my cousin and I," he said, a laugh in his eyes, and ordered coffee. "You see, my cousin Harry wanted to study Potions under the greatest Potions Master in this century. As for me, well, I wanted to study Healing at the best Healing school in the western hemisphere."_

 _I asked him for further clarification, and a shadow passed over his face. He was silent, for a moment, before he explained. "My mother passed away of an incurable illness when I was young," he said shortly, finally, but he let a small smile slip through. "I want to study infectious diseases and incurable diseases – I have always wanted to. Hogwarts is an excellent school, but their Healing program is extremely limited, and I would have needed to attend extra schooling afterwards. And Harry has admired Master Snape since we were children. As I'm sure you know, she is also a potions prodigy, and all she has ever wanted is her Potions mastery. So, we switched places."_

 _I asked him about Britain, about the rules they broke when they decided to make the switch. Britain is known for its regressive blood purity policies, particular under the current political regime._

 _He was silent, again, for a few minutes, sipping at his coffee. I didn't dare interrupt his thinking._

" _To be fair, I don't think we knew what we were getting into when we started," he admitted finally. "It helped that we looked very similar to begin with, and that we were around the same size, which is what gave us the idea in the first place. We were eleven, you have to understand. We knew it was risky, sure, but the risk has always been for her and not for me. I'm a pureblood – and not only that, I'm the heir to the House of Black, one of Britain's more prominent noble houses. If we were caught, I always knew that I could just have my schooling records changed to reflect my educational history, and aiding and abetting blood identity theft doesn't have the same criminal consequences. I would pay a hefty fine, sure, but it's a fine that I and my family can afford to pay. And I, of course, would be here in America, ready to claim sanctuary if I needed it._

" _The risk was always for her – we did know, intellectually, that if we were caught she would be in line for the Dementor's Kiss. That is the punishment, you know, for blood identity theft. She was willing to take that risk – and I was selfish enough to indulge her in it. Honestly, I'm not sure I expected to get this far, even though, as time passed, it became obvious that we had to hide more and more things from the people we loved."_

 _I commented that, as an American, this seems utterly insane. Even Rappaport's Law didn't go so far as to criminalize blood status. He laughed._

" _It_ is _insane. Absolutely insane," he agreed. "If there's one thing I've learned in America, it's that one's blood status has_ nothing _to do with whether they will be a successful witch or wizard. My closest friend here is a British Muggleborn, and she's top of most of our classes, miles and away ahead of most purebloods, and definitely far ahead of me in most classes. I'm only better in a few Healing classes and in Potions, and that's because I've studied medical journals since I was six and since I grew up with Harry. And look at Harry, too – look at everything she's done while masquerading as me at Hogwarts! She cured the Sleeping Sickness in first year, killed and dismembered a basilisk in her second year, and she destroyed the Dominion Jewel in her third year. I've often told her – Harry, you need to stop saving the world, because I'll never be able to live up to my own reputation. And under her own name, and on her own merits, she got an internship at the English Guild in her third year, and published the first paper on Shaped Imbuing – her own discovery. I understand that she's been collaborating with Master Snape under her own name for months now. If that isn't evidence that blood purity and power is a load of bunk, I'm not sure what is."_

 _A pause._

" _She's very powerful, too, in case you didn't guess. She always had to play it down as Rigel to protect me. I'm above average, the Blacks have always produced powerful, if not mad, wizards, but I wouldn't be surprised if she were Lord-level."_

 _I nodded, and turned instead to how, exactly, they were able to pull of this switch for so many years._

" _Well, as I mentioned, we always looked very similar as children. The first year, we just both cut our hair and went to school as normal. She had it harder, I think, having to hide her sex from everyone, whereas I just said my parents made a mistake, that I was a boy named Harry Potter. In second year, Harry came up with a modification of the Polyjuice Potion to make it last for about a year at a time. She also came up with the spell to blend our features so that we would continue to look alike, though of course we look nothing alike, now. Third year is when it became easier, at least for me."_

 _He winked, and in a blink of an eye, his hair was blonde, his nose upturned like a pig's snout. Another second later, and the change was gone. "Metamorphagi run in my family, but as for Harry, she kept with the modified Polyjuice Potion."_

 _No one has ever modified the Polyjuice Potion to last more than an hour, and I tell him so. He shrugged, a fluid motion, nonchalant. "You would have to ask Harry the details of that, I think," he replied. "I don't know."_

 _I asked him about the blending spell, and he didn't know the answer to that, either. So instead, I turned to the question everyone is burning to hear: What now? Where is Harry now? What will the infamous duo do now?_

 _He shifted thoughtfully in his chair. "Well, I don't know where Harry is, and to be honest, since I intend on this hitting the news, I wouldn't tell you even if I did know. For me, I'll change my history at AIM to reflect my actual name, and I hope to finish out my Healing studies here – afterwards, I am hoping to stay in America. I won't return to Britain if Harry can't, and it bothers me deeply that the people I have come to care about here in America, people like my best friend Hermione Granger, a British Muggleborn, won't have the same opportunities as I would at home."_

 _Headmistress Picquery of the American Institute of Magic commented, in letter, that Arcturus Rigel Black has a very strong academic record and that she is more than delighted that her school's strong Healing program is recognized internationally. She further commented that, should Harriett Potter come to America, she would be pleased to oversee her admission directly to the Potions Mastery program at the Institute and, as necessary, issue scholarships to cover her remaining tuition for the next three years on the basis of her academic achievements thus far._

* * *

The _Daily Prophet_ reprints the _American Standard_ 's interview the day after, with a brief addition noting that Lord Sirius Black is moving to America to be closer to his son. Below the fold, however, is another exclusive.

 _REACTIONS FROM HOGWARTS CLASSMATES_

 _This reporter met yesterday with two of Harry Potter's closest friends at the Three Broomsticks in nearby Hogsmeade: Pansy Parkinson, Heiress to the Parkinson family, and Draco Malfoy, Heir to the House of Malfoy. Miss Parkinson was dressed neatly in robes of pale green, a silver scarf delicately accenting her blonde hair, and Mr. Malfoy was dressed in dark gray, set off with pale, dove-gray boots._

 _I thanked them for their time, and they exchanged a look between themselves._

" _You are very welcome," Miss Parkinson replied, soft. "You must understand our perspective, though; we have known Rigel Black for many years and he is our dearest friend. The fact that he has, all along, been Harriett Potter in disguise is a shock to us."_

 _I asked them if they truly had no idea – it cannot have been so straightforward. Even ignoring the fact that Harriett is a halfblood, she would have needed to hide her sex for so many years. The Black interview provided some context, but Black did specifically say that she hid her sex, instead of changing it. I referred them, too, to the comment I had overheard on the fifth of June, that "it explains more than it doesn't."_

" _None at all," Mr. Malfoy responded, though he shot me an ugly look of warning. I suppose I warranted it, as the initial comment published was his. "Rigel – Harriett – has always been very secretive, and we attributed it to his – her nature. She also didn't like to be touched, to the point where I asked about it in third year, but she said she had a physiological condition that made physical contact difficult. And she was always extremely modest in the boys changing rooms and in our dorm – we just thought Rigel was odd, but we liked him in spite of it."_

" _We still like her, in spite of everything,"_ _Miss Parkinson said, a hand on Mr. Malfoy's arm. "That is why we agreed to this interview. It is as Draco says – we never had any idea that Rigel was not who he said he was, though we certainly thought he was odd in so many ways. The fact that Rigel turns out to be Harriett is not an issue for us – we still love her, whoever she turns out to be. We became friends with Harriett when she started at Hogwarts, and we want her to know that we are still her friends, wherever she is, and if she needs any help, any at all – all she needs to do is ask."_

 _Mr. Malfoy glared at me, a hand protectively over Miss Parkinson's. "Publish that, word for word."_

 _I held my hands up in surrender. I assumed that since they were asking me this, they had no idea where she was, but I asked them anyway._

" _No, none at all, and we're sick with worry for her," Miss Parkinson confirmed. "We've heard her speak fluent French, so it's possible that she's gone over the Channel, but none of our contacts there have heard anything either."_

 _An inquiry with our French correspondents found nothing, which is not surprising given that the powerful Parkinson and Malfoy contacts came up empty. Headmistress Maxime of the Beauxbatons Academy of Magic provided the following comments._

" _Based on her previous academic achievements, both as Rigel Black and under her own name, we would be honoured to accept Miss Potter to Académie de Magie Beauxbâtons for the completion of her studies. Hogwarts School has, we have always believed, gravely erred in excluding children based on blood purity, and Miss Potter's accomplishments easily demonstrate her potential. We believe that Miss Potter will easily find herself at home here in France."_

 _The French Minister for Magic echoed the Headmistress' comments, and extended French citizenship to Miss Potter._

 _Lord and Lady Potter, released this morning for lack of evidence in connection with the actions of their daughter, announced their intention to move their family to America. From the family seat at Potter Place, Lord Potter stated, "In this political climate, I am increasingly worried about the safety of my Muggleborn wife and my daughters. I no longer believe that Britain is a safe enough environment for them, and by happenstance, both I and Lady Potter received substantial employment opportunities in New York City, which will also be home to the new headquarters for the Marauders line of prank products. We are sorry to have to leave our home, but hope that a return will be possible in the future."_

 _When I asked him if he had any knowledge of the elder Miss Potter's whereabouts, but his face dropped. "None at all," he replied. "I'm extremely worried, as I'm sure you can imagine, but I have to trust that wherever she is, Harry is able to take care of herself. That, too, is another reason for our move – we hope that, in New York, once it is safe to do so, Harry will be able to come home."_

 _Lord Potter will be joining the New York City Auror Office as a senior Auror with the Magical Congress of the United States of America._

* * *

Caelum throws himself into his Potions research that day, and the day after, but the articles haunt him, whisper in the back of his mind. It's evening, evening in his safari tent with _muffliato_ spells cast on all the walls of his tent, when he gives himself over to the sheer insanity, and he laughs, and laughs, and laughs until he cries.

It's stupid. It's so overwhelming, incredibly stupid, that Harriett Potter should have committed blood identity theft to go to _Hogwarts_ , of all places. It's so overwhelmingly, incredibly stupid that, not only did she do so, she did so masquerading as a _boy_ , and apparently wasn't caught at it for four years, until she apparently became victim to a Dark Lord. It's incredibly, overwhelmingly stupid that she effectively went to Hogwarts and showed up all the purebloods, all the people like his parents and the Malfoys and the SOW Party hellbent on blood purity and, in a nutshell, all the people like _him_.

And isn't it also so overwhelmingly, incredibly _brave_ , stupidly _brave_ , for her to do it? Isn't it, in some ways, so incredibly, stupidly brave to want something so much, so very much, that she staked her soul on it?

She is brave, insanely so, he thinks, and he almost surprised to realize that he _likes that_. Harriett Potter didn't let other people make the rules – she never let fear rule her decisions, her choices, the way that Caelum did for so many years. She took what she wanted, and she made no apologies for it, and even if she is on the run now, Caelum believes ( _he has to, he thinks_ ) that by nature, by power, by sheer resourcefulness, that she is fine, that she will be fine.

She comes from a fairy tale, he thinks hysterically. She is Albert Hunt, halfblood of the fourteenth century, rewriting the rules of Transfiguration around him; she is Alicia Bones, Mudblood in the eighteenth century, redesigning the wizarding legal system from scratch. She is Newt Scamander, halfblood, creature specialist – she is Master Severus Snape, halfblood, Potions Master.

And he? Who is he? Is he Aloysius Lestrange, to be blasted off the family registry because, against everything he's ever been taught, against everything he's ever known, he wants to follow her into this madness? Because, against all odds, he has long since recognized that she's a bloody fucking potions genius and he's always, always wanted to bask in that?

Isn't that what the last few years have been about? Ever since she walked into that potions lab in his Potions Guild internship, she has blown up his expectations, crossed every line he ever set for her. She's a genius, and despite coming up with the discovery of the century, despite the fact that he was never, not even once that summer, _nice_ to her, it was him that she dragged out to dinner, and it was him that she took time to argue with, and it was _him_ that took the opportunity, that year and the year afterwards, to continue their acquaintanceship. He wrote to her – she replied, and the next summer they had lunch, a formal lunch and she even paid, and then she gave him a personal lesson in shaped imbuing. And it was that day, too, that changed his life - she was the catalyst for that awful, awesome day that he finally let go and turned the Cruciatus curse back on his mother.

Harriett Potter came in and, despite all his meagre efforts to the contrary, changed his life.

He _likes_ her.

And isn't that the realization of the century? Him, Caelum Lestrange, Heir to House Lestrange, _liking_ Harriett Potter, a halfblood – him, Caelum Lestrange, whose mother is an expert torturer, wanting nothing more than to bask in Harriett's presence, to argue and fight and talk about potions with her all day.

Everyone else can babble on and on about wanting to help her, if only she would reach out to them. He, Caelum Lestrange, won't wait for that. He will help her, and he has just the thing to do it.

He walks over to the tiny camp desk, where he pulls out the letters that he has stolen from his mother so many months ago, sets a quill to parchment, and begins to write.

 _Potter,_

 _I find myself quite unsurprised to learn that you've apparently been committing blood identity theft for years to go to Hogwarts. While I can't say that this is a good life choice, you have my appreciation for your sheer nerves in doing such a thing._

 _I understand that you recently escaped the clutches of Britain's new resident Dark Lord. I write to warn you, even though it is very much against my sensibilities to do so. This Lord Voldemort is no Lord Riddle and will not be content to take the political route; he wants a revolution, probably in blood. I suspect that, since you have so recently escaped his attentions, he will probably be searching for you. I enclose, for your edification, a set of letters my mother had in her possession. My mother is, I suspect, his torture expert. Do with it what you will._

 _While it shocks me to be writing this, please don't let yourself be tortured into insanity. I enclose also a sample of something I've been working on for some time – if you take it before taking Cruciatus, it will be harder to torture you into insanity. I assume that you can reverse-engineer it, but if not, you'll have to meet me in person and beg me for the full recipe. It is not a finished product, though, as I never did enough tests on it to demonstrate how effective it might be._

 _And also, I want your secret to extending the length of the Polyjuice transformation._

 _Yours truly,_

 _Caelum Lestrange._

He makes two copies, sets a vial of his modified Strengthening Solution with each. The first he sends to Arcturus Rigel Black, at the American Institute for Magic.

The other, he sends to Lionel Hurst.

* * *

Author's Notes: Wheeeew, what a ride! If you were wondering where I was for the past six months, I was working on this. I hope you all enjoyed it, and I hope it tides everyone over before Violet's next chapter. As always, love your comments and your criticisms, so leave a review below! Also, if you have any questions about my choices, feel free to ask away - I usually respond to reviews, if necessary!


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